Children of the Island

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Children of the Island Page 19

by Wright, T. M.


  He told himself, I am a creature of the Earth, and my own kind number in the hundreds, in the thousands all around me.

  It gave him comfort. It warmed him a little. Because he could hear them, and their voices were even louder than before. They were voices that were shrill, on the verge of breaking. And he knew it was because of him.

  Which made what was happening to the children all right. They had done their work. The city was turning on itself—a snake biting its own tail.

  He should have guessed that their deaths would come. That the children could not survive here for very long.

  This place, this city, was not theirs. It never had been. Like fish flung onto dry land gasping for breath, they were grasping for the Earth, their mother, and finding a million square miles of asphalt instead.

  He could not have expected that they would adapt.

  He felt Elena push away from him suddenly. He looked; he saw her stand. He said to her, surprising himself because he had never used the words before and they sounded strange coming from him, "I'm sorry." She did not acknowledge him. She turned and soon was lost in the darkness.

  Chapter 63

  Jim Hart thought it was like looking at a whirling carousel that has various scenes painted on it, and that if his eyes panned its movement, the scenes became visible, if only for the very briefest moment.

  Marie Aubin was in one of the scenes. She was lying very still, on her back, and someone—perhaps himself, Jim thought—was weeping over her.

  And Fred Williams was there, in another scene. He had a scowl on his face; he was mouthing the word "candy-ass."

  And Marie was there again, leaning over him, saying, "Jim, I can't carry you by myself, you've got to help." And he was singing, "If that diamond . . . ring turns brass . . ."

  And, in another scene, a tall man was watching him from across a short stretch of water.

  He saw the same man again. In a place crowded with cars and people. A place where small, dark, and beautiful faces with exquisite, unblinking pale blue eyes watched, and watched, and watched. As if they were faces on grandfather clocks. Which is what he let them become, what he let his mind turn them into, because the faces on grandfather clocks are hungry for no one.

  The scenes on the carousel were like scenes from history. They were static and dry, and the noises they made were noises his mind made for them, out of his brain's catalogue of sounds:

  And he remembered this, too:

  He was a city dweller. He had told them that. "New York may be a hellhole—I know it's a hellhole—but at least you know where to hide, and from what, and with whom!" For Christ's sake, that was true, that was modern American anthropology, it belonged in National Geographic.

  And he had told them—slowly, steadily, as if teaching them something that required their deep attention—that people (people in general, but not all people) had long ago built cities in order to shield themselves from the wildness all around them. And gradually, over the centuries, they had produced children and grandchildren and great grandchildren who were increasingly dependent upon the cities; until, at last, a whole new life form had developed; the city dweller.

  Just like some birds were cliff dwellers, and some fish were bottom dwellers (but not all birds, and not all fish), so some people were city dwellers. But not all people. What was simpler? But they—Fred, and Marie, and their friends—hadn't understood that, or believed. They had told him he was intellectualizing his weakness; they had challenged him and laughed at him, and had, finally, dragged him here, where he had no business being, where the goddamned stinging rain was surely going to kill him unless he got out from under it.

  He watched the carousel spin, watched it cast off its scenes from history, and he ached as he watched, as if his entire body had been frostbitten and the blood was returning to it at last.

  It was sanity and awareness and knowledge coming back, and it scared the hell out of him.

  In another part of Bellevue, Whimsical Fatman—who was mending nicely, much to the surprise of his doctor—was listening to a couple of the other patients as he moved his wheelchair past them down the corridor. They were saying something about "the city falling apart," which, he thought, had been going on for a long time, anyway, and "people getting nervous as cats," which, he thought, they had always been, and that "the only comic relief is these streakers, these fresh-air fiends. Christ, they're seeing 'em everywhere, I guess," he said, and laughed. But beneath the laughter, he sensed an air of confusion and befuddlement.

  Whimsy got to the door marked WARD R: PERMISSION TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He remembered the face he had seen in the little square window, the man who was the spitting image of W.C. Fields. But the window was empty now.

  Lenny Wingate looked up from her desk at the couple who'd just come in. "Yes," she said, "can I help you?"

  "I'm here to see my daughter," the man said.

  "Her name and ward number, please?"

  "Marsha Campbell. Ward R."

  Lenny looked the name up. "She's not an outpatient, is she?"

  "No," Sam Campbell answered.

  "You are her mother?" Lenny asked the woman.

  Joyce Dewitte shook her head. "No. A friend."

  "I'm sorry, but—" Lenny began, and Sam interrupted, "We've made prior arrangements. I believe there should be a note there–" He leaned over Lenny's desk, saw her flip through the patient roster. "Yes," she said at last, "here we are. Let me confirm this with her doctor, please. You're a little early"—she checked her watch; it was 6:10—"but I don't think there should be a problem. If you could wait over there, please." She nodded at the reception area, packed with people.

  Sam nodded reluctantly.

  John Marsh came very slowly into Dr. Halloway's office, his gait stiff.

  Halloway nodded at the rococo couch; Marsh nodded back and went over to it. He sat on the edge.

  "Pardon me," Halloway said, "for disturbing your dinner. I wanted to talk to you, Mr. Marsh.

  "You have . . . no right to keep me . . . here," Marsh said, and realized dimly that his eyes were beginning to tear; he felt as if his brain had been filled with pudding, and his limbs encased in mud.

  "That's not precisely correct, Mr. Marsh, but that's not why I called you in here." He paused, turned away, so Marsh could see only his profile. "You are a very disturbing individual, Mr. Marsh. And you have said some very disturbing things." Marsh noted dimly that Halloway's voice was quivering. "We're going to be taking you off the medication you've been receiving. It seems to be having an adverse effect on you."

  "Are you letting me out of here?"

  Halloway ignored the question. "You're a very long way from home, aren't you, Mr. Marsh?"

  Marsh said nothing.

  "Penn Yann?—that's in the Finger Lakes Region, isn't it?"

  Still, Marsh said nothing.

  "And as far as we've been able to ascertain, you really have no way back."

  "I've got my truck," Marsh grumbled.

  Halloway checked a file on his desk. "Oh yes. Miss Wingate—one of our Admissions people—did mention that. Apparently the police have impounded it."

  "They had no right—"

  "Probably not, Mr. Marsh. But the fact is, they did impound it."

  "And that woman, that 'Miss Wingate' has got my dog, too." Despite his drug-induced lethargy, Marsh felt anger welling up inside him.

  "You're very attached to that dog, aren't you?" Marsh said nothing.

  "And even to your truck, I imagine, isn't that so?" Marsh still said nothing.

  "You very much resent me, don't you?"

  "Yes," Marsh answered at once, "I do."

  "And I would guess that you don't like this hospital very much, either."

  "It's a hellhole."

  Halloway grinned. "You probably feel the same way about this city, if I'm any judge of people, and lam."

  "It's a hellhole, too."

  Halloway took a breath, held it, then said on the exhale: "Then it
would probably be a real godsend to you to be able to leave it

  "Yes."

  "I can make that possible, Mr. Marsh."

  Marsh shook his head. "No," he whispered.

  "Oh but I can. I am not without–"

  "Seth is here. In this city."

  "I am going to ask that you not persist with that, Mr. Marsh. I am going to tell you not to persist with it." His voice was quivering again; he turned his head and looked Marsh squarely in the eye. "Remember, please, Mr. Marsh, as I said, that I can get you out of here. However, if you wish to stay with us here at Bellevue for, let's say, another few months, or even another few years, we can make that possible, too. I can make that possible, Mr. Marsh. And, conversely, if you wish to leave, if you wish to be able to leave, with your dog, and your truck, then I can certainly make that possible, too. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

  Marsh did not answer immediately. But he did understand. He understood only too well. At last, he said, "I understand."

  The doctor smiled, and turned his head again so his face was in profile. "Yes, I believe that you do. That will be all for now."

  Marsh left and went back to his room.

  A Partial Transcript of the 7:00 P.M. Channel Three News Update:

  . . . and this just in: The bodies of three children, aged ten to twelve years have been found in three separate areas of Manhattan tonight—on the fringes of the West Village, on East Houston Street in the Bowery, and in a tenement house on 129th Street. Details at this time are sketchy, but it has been learned that each of the bodies—two boys and a girl—was nude, and there were no outward signs of cause of death . . .

  A Partial Transcript of an 8:15 P.M. Channel Three News Bulletin

  City police report that several carloads of armed men have been spotted in various locations on the lower east side, and near the West Village . . .

  Chapter 64

  At The Stone; 7:30 P.M.

  "It's because we're such an integrated city," Snipe heard the balding, bearded man on the TV say, "and I don't mean racially. I mean, we're such an interdependent city. . . If the subways go out, Wall Street closes down. If the traffic lights fail, or the sewer systems backs up, or a transformer out in God-knows-where blows itself to pieces, then we're in deep trouble. And now, with people left and right arming themselves—often illegally—we are just perpetuating the fear that caused us to arm ourselves in the first place."

  Snipe thought he had never enjoyed anything quite so much: The city, his city, was about to fall apart right in front of him.

  He wished he could look out one of the windows and see mobs running through the streets, torches in hand, screaming "Death to all!" But he knew it wasn't as bad as that. Not yet, anyway. Of course, if he got lucky . . .

  Then he heard, below the noise of the TV, from behind, from near the door, in his voice, "Hey you, dipshit!" He remembered using the words on Carter Barefoot just before beating the crap out of him. He heard again, again in his voice, "Hey you, dipshit!"

  And so he did not bother to turn and look. He knew who it was; he knew what it was. And he knew what it wanted.

  7:40 P.M.

  Georgie had been pounding on lots of doors. Wanamaker's apartment was empty, and Aunt Sandy's apartment, too. Wilson Gruscher had pleaded so poignantly, from behind his locked door, for him to go away that at last he had, and Carter Barefoot, also from behind his locked door, had whimpered something about meeting him "on the street—ten minutes!" which Georgie thought was probably a lie, but he had little time to worry about it.

  He was tired. Bone-tired. And Winifred Haritson was a lot heavier than he had supposed she would be.

  "I hurt, Georgie," she pleaded. "Oh I hurt." She said the words every half minute or so, as if discovering her pain anew each time. Georgie wished fervently that she'd stay quiet, and so he told her, time and again, "I know it hurts, Mrs. Haritson. I know it hurts."

  He was carrying her piggyback style, her skeletal arms crossed in front of his neck. Her head was down, so her cheek rested against his shoulder; she wept constantly, and softly.

  Georgie imagined, now and then, that he could feel her pain.

  He slowed his gait when he approached The Stone's main entrance doors. The lobby was all but pitch dark—he could see the vague, dark yellow mounds of an old couch and chair and, in one corner, the suggestion of a phone booth, sans phone, which had been ripped out long before. He looked through the double doors at the street. It too was dark. And still.

  He heard a scream then, and he stopped walking. He listened. He heard it again, from his left, from down a short hallway. From Lou's apartment, he realized. Where Snipe was. He thought it had not been so much a scream of pain as a scream of frustration—Goddammit, Goddammit, why does it have to end now?

  He listened. He heard nothing else. He went to the doors, pushed them open, and carried Winifred Haritson out to the street.

  He turned right. He stopped. Someone was standing a couple yards away. "Who's there?" he said.

  "It's me," he heard. "Carter Barefoot." His voice sounded very nasal, because his nose had been turned into pulp by Snipe. "Where we goin', anyway?"

  8:00 P.M.

  Jim Hart was cold. He had pulled the sheet and blanket over himself, but he was still cold. He was convinced that the hospital had turned the heat off. Maybe it was part of the therapy. Keep the patients cold and numb.

  At any rate, it would explain the creepers of fog swirling into the room.

  He said to John Marsh, in the other bed, "Look at that, look at that!" and nodded at the fog.

  Marsh looked; he saw nothing.

  "They're crazy!" Jim Hart insisted. "The people who run this place are crazy. They want us to freeze. Jesus, aren't you cold?"

  John Marsh said nothing.

  Jim Hart watched the fog swirl into the room, watched it curl around the bedposts. It was a strange kind of fog, he thought. It seemed to move under a power all its own. And its colors were wrong. Because it shouldn't have had colors at all, he realized.

  At Central Park: Near Bethesda Fountain

  He said to himself, aloud, "I am a creature of the earth." And for the very briefest of moments he had no idea what it meant.

  For the very briefest of moments he saw himself as something he had never been—a man. And for the very briefest of moments he was afraid, because he was cold, and he was hungry, and he did not know what he was doing here, in Central Park, in Manhattan, with the voices of a thousand strange people moving about in his head. ("Oh yes, that was Thursday, wasn't it?" and "Watch for the light; wait till it turns green," and "We have this in a size twelve," and "I know it hurts," and "I ain't gonna do nothing to ya; I just want your wallet, just your wallet!"). And then he knew that they were his people, the children of the island, the children of this island, and that he was here to call to them. To give their heritage back to them. So they could take their island back.

  "I am a creature of the earth," he said again. "And the energy within me is the earth's energy." He took one long, deep breath.

  He focused that energy.

  And on the Upper West Side, in a law office on West 110th Street, the newly installed junior partner of the law firm of Johnson, Bigny and Belles, a young woman named Karen Gears, looked up from her work at a window which faced south and one word escaped her, "No!" It was a plea, a word of desperation—keep the dreams away, lock them up in her childhood, where they belong, where, indeed, they had begun, and where she had supposed they had ended.

  "It's turned awful damned cold," said Carter Barefoot to Georgie MacPhail. "Awful damned cold!" He was dressed in old, stretch-polyester brown pants, a faded yellow Dacron shirt—Georgie guessed that it was as old as he was—and a threadbare denim jacket that was obviously doing very little to keep him warm.

  The three of them—Georgie, Mrs. Haritson, Carter Barefoot—bad seated themselves just inside a storefront. Georgie's plan had been to hail a taxi, which would take them to Bellevue. But
the street was unusually quiet, and Georgie guessed, correctly, that people were staying at home in the face of the recent murders in the city.

  Georgie could not imagine why Carter Barefoot was complaining so much about being cold. It was cold, sure, but even Mrs. Haritson, before she'd passed out, hadn't been complaining about it. Of course, Georgie considered, she had other things to worry about, didn't she?

  "How's Mrs. Haritson?" asked Carter Barefoot.

  "I guess she fainted or something," Georgie answered. He looked at her; she was sitting up; her head was over on her right shoulder, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. "She looks like she's asleep."

  "Is she dead?" asked Carter Barefoot.

  Georgie put his finger to her neck, felt nothing, put his finger an inch lower; he got a pulse. "No," he whispered, "she's not dead."

  Carter Barefoot allowed his head to fall back so it rested against the iron grating in front of the doors. "Where we goin' exactly?"

  "Bellevue," Georgie answered. "I'm takin' Mrs. Haritson to Bellevue. They'll fix her up."

  Carter Barefoot nodded slightly. "Uh-huh. It's sure awful damned cold."

  On the fringes of the West Village, in lower Manhattan, a good-looking, dark-haired, gray-eyed boy was lying on his back on his bed. The lights were out, the shades and curtains drawn. He had always liked darkness.

  He was remembering that just two days before, he had somehow gotten Christine Basile, of all people, to agree to go out with him. He was remembering also that barely a month before, he'd celebrated a birthday. His sixteenth, he'd been told. The man who called himself his father had given him an extra set of keys to the car.

  The boy was weeping now, and he was whispering to himself, "What a crock of shit, what a damned crock of shit!"

  In Manhattan, on West Tenth Street, in a small, bachelor apartment which had been decorated very tastefully in earthtones, and included a wicker loveseat, bamboo shades, and a large, well-maintained fresh-water aquarium, a man named Philip Case—who was apparently in his early thirties—was holding his head and tightly gritting his teeth, trying futilely to shut out the images that came to him in waves, like a tide filled with bad memories.

 

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