Sundance

by David Fuller

  He was lifted off the ground, knees bending at the force, watching the foreman’s outraged face vanish below, whisked up into unfenced air, a short step off the edge into nothing. He was high quickly, dizzy with the rise, now above the shorter buildings, now passing the taller. He looked across a full city that carpeted an island and spilled out over land that stretched beyond the rivers. A rush of wind snatched his breath and his chest went hollow so that he inhaled hard and filled up suddenly, and the massive city itself came into his lungs. In a matter of hours his idea of what was real and possible had changed. He now understood what the city could do for him. He looked at the bay, then at the rivers that girded the island. He saw the bridges men had made to conquer them. Dozens of ships lay in the miles of docks that fringed the shore and many more ships traveled the rivers, giant ocean liners with multiple smokestacks, old wooden ships with sails and rigging, ferries, containerships, steamships, and uncountable smaller craft that slashed white between them. Farther out in the harbor was the statue. In letters, Etta had described her as something truly fine, and Longbaugh was glad she had not been disappointed. As a girl, Etta had collected pictures of the statue, published when it had been unpacked and constructed in the harbor in the 1880s. Her sister, Mina, after a visit East, had brought her a toy memento that Etta had graciously accepted, then placed high on a bookshelf, where only Liberty’s arm and the torch could be seen. She had found the toy ugly, the head too large, the face too square and masculine, a poor representation that did not come close to the magazine drawings of the real thing. But she had kept it and, as far as he knew, still had it as an adult. Mina wasn’t the only nostalgic one honoring a sister’s affection.

  The freight elevator stopped at the top of the main body of the building and men came aboard to unload it. One of them stared at his boots.

  He stepped off the elevator. He was higher off the ground than he had ever been. He took it all in, and his eye fell on a hatless welder. The imp rose inside him. He took off the cap and approached the man.

  “I think you lost this.”

  The welder looked at it. “Yeah, that’s mine—hey, how in the world—?”

  “I caught it for you.”

  The welder’s mouth fell open as he looked over the edge, where he had last seen his hat in free fall. He looked at the hat, then at Longbaugh, trying to picture him jumping after it and catching it in mid-drop. The welder suffered an inadvertent shudder.

  Longbaugh walked away, leaving the welder to contemplate the mystery.

  He climbed into the steel skeleton of construction. The sun made one side of the steel hot, while the back side stayed cool. He was aware of the height of his boot heels, and minded his step. He climbed and hung on to a vertical beam, and leaned out to look down. Far down. Thousands of buildings were lined along complex street patterns that uptown broke out into a grid. He was small, innocuous, anonymous. He found that fact both unnerving and comforting.

  Longbaugh spoke to a nearby worker.

  “How far up are we?”

  The worker squinted. “You joking, pal? Fifty-seven stories.”

  “How high is that?”

  “How high does it look? The tallest thing in the world, taller’n the Eiffel Tower. Who’re you again?”

  “No one in particular.”

  “’Cause I know everyone here and you ain’t no sky boy.”

  “Would you believe if I said the new man?”

  “New man with the plumb gang?”

  “Sure.”

  “Nope. Not for a second.”

  Longbaugh was full of cheer. “Me neither.”

  The man glowered, picked up a basket of bolts, and walked away.

  Longbaugh watched a low cloud cover come directly at him, then surround him in a soup of gray. Everything above and below vanished. He floated on a steel beam that disappeared a few feet away, encircled by foggy nothing. He was alone. In the midst of more people than he could have imagined, he was unseen and anonymous. The city could not only hide him, but here he could slay his nickname and bury it. That idea had germinated when he saw the signs shouting for attention. He was in the right place. He could search for her and cause less than a ripple. He could even reclaim his real name.

  The cloud moved on, laying out the city below him as if a map unrolled, revealing the Statue of Liberty, the rest of the bay, the lower point of the island, buildings and streets, until he was looking straight down at tiny people and motorcars beneath his feet. He turned with the back of the cloud rushing away and watched the northern part of the island gradually revealed. Construction workers strolled on steel girders as sure as cats. They were intimate with the air and shared a fellowship in their work, knowing that they saw what ordinary men did not. For a moment, Longbaugh was one of them.

  • • •

  THE ADDRESS of Etta’s boardinghouse proved to be a run-down old mansion, but it still had some pride, as the windows were free of the ubiquitous clotheslines bearing sheets and trousers that downgraded the other buildings in the area. He had expected New York to be younger, and while there was extensive construction up north, down here he had a sense of a place already passed by. A young woman in the midst of chores stepped out the front door. She might have been pretty but a vertical line between her eyebrows was as deep as her look of exhaustion. She held her lips taut, her eyes were strained and wary, and strands of hair clung to her forehead and cheeks.

  “Looking for a room if you have one.”

  The furrow between her eyebrows ran deeper. “There’s a room, but it’s one of the bigger ones. Probably won’t want to afford it.”

  “Let me decide.”

  “Suit yourself.” She looked at his boots and cowboy hat, then at the gear over his shoulder. She walked inside and he was meant to follow.

  She led him through a vestibule that had once been quite the thing. The dark wainscoting was as high as his shoulders. The rug might have been the original, and while clean, it was just about done, faded and in some areas thinned to the floorboards. A few small paintings decorated the walls, but if there had been pieces with style, wit, or talent they had taken flight. The staircase was grand but wanted paint, and the banister waited on a carpenter. He followed her up to the second floor to a heavy door that she opened with a key. The room was simply furnished, clean like the rest of the house, and when she spread the curtains, a good amount of light came in.

  “This will do.”

  She looked surprised. “It’s nothing special. Was nice once, but the owner didn’t believe in upkeep.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Well.” She was unsure how to continue with her new tenant. “I am . . . you may as well call me Abigail.”

  She told him the rate and he paid her without haggling. He set down his things. He asked where to buy clothes and she mentioned a local men’s clothing store.

  “You might find something there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s too fancy.”

  “You’re very young to be so disappointed.”

  She pinned him with a malignant eye, as if he had just tapped her on the head with a whale bone from a corset. Then she showed him her profile, chin raised. He thought that he would be wise to keep his thoughts to himself. He waited, and when she had collected herself, she led him down the hall. They came to the door of a privy indoors. He smiled at this place, New York City. A facility on his floor with running water. Luxury.

  “Wash up here, I suspect you’re tired.” After a moment, she said, “You won’t be disappointed, this here’s the most opulent jakes in all the five boroughs.”

  “As well as every state west of the Mississippi.”

  She almost smiled. He was anything but disappointed. He certainly stank after days of travel and was ready to be clean. She demonstrated the hand pump, and water came through a faucet and into a basin. She put a hand on a towel he could use,
then stepped outside and closed the door. On the far side, she did not move away. He waited and a few moments later heard her tiptoe down the hall. He turned to consider the room.

  His eye was drawn to the color of a small olive ribbon about six inches long that appeared to have been forgotten, stuck between a drinking glass and an old tin of Toilet and Baby Powder. He was reminded of Etta, as the ribbon was the color of his bandanna, and then thought that if her room had been on this floor, she would have spent time in this privy. He pictured her standing at the mirror, curling a strand of hair around a finger, turning her head to one side, then the other, as she imagined a different shape to her nose, holding her finger along the profile trying to see her sideways reflection. Years before, he had caught her doing just that, with total sincerity. Later she did it to tease, reminding him of his previous objection. He was fond of the shape of her nose.

  After washing up, he returned to his room and unpacked. In the process of placing his few belongings in drawers, he found items left behind by previous boarders. In a drawer a single man’s black silk stocking, in the wardrobe a lady’s hat, under the bed a book, The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck. He flipped it open and found the man in thrall to exclamation points. He went downstairs and did not see Abigail. He went into the street and followed her directions to the haberdashery.

  The sun was long off the streets, a victim of the heights of buildings. Electricity winked on, flooding the pavement with a light he had never before experienced, and there was such an abundance of lights that the sidewalks appeared to glow from within. This was inconceivable, all this illumination at night. He was used to the moon, which, once out of its sliver, reflected enough light to ride. Of course, cities he passed through on the train going east had lights as well, but not on this scale. He appreciated it with childlike glee.

  A young boy on a bicycle rolled down the sidewalk and swerved into an old woman and knocked her flat on her back. Longbaugh watched, surprised, as the boy, instead of apologizing, loudly berated her as if it had been entirely her doing. Other pedestrians paused to observe the drama, and had he been more alert, he might have made something of the fact that a handful of children slipped into the belly of the growing crowd. Bicycle Boy explored his vocal range with the bravura of a heldentenor, and Longbaugh wondered what made him so angry. He did not exactly feel the hand that moved to take his wallet, but some inner instinct alerted him and he grabbed a narrow wrist, bringing around a boy in his middle teens who faced him with a feral snarl. The boy yowled, and Bicycle Boy quit bellowing, grabbed up his bicycle and, looking over his shoulder, pedaled away. Longbaugh held up the thief’s hand and pointedly took back his wallet. The boy’s false yowl grew louder. Longbaugh looked around. The team of nimble-fingered youngsters side-glanced their targets to read their reactions.

  Longbaugh used the captured hand of his pickpocket to point out first one, then another of the boy’s cronies until the pedestrians understood they were being robbed. They turned on the boys, women battering children with umbrellas, men shaking them as if their stolen money would somehow pour out of them like granulated salt.

  Longbaugh twisted the boy’s arm behind his back, and the fake yowling stopped, replaced by a sincere “Ow!” Longbaugh held him that way long enough so the boy pickpocket got the point. Then he set him free. The boy stepped a few feet away, shaking his arm, and looked back at Longbaugh with baffled surprise. Longbaugh remembered he was wearing boots and a western hat, so he said, “Git, ya little varmint.” The varmint hightailed it.

  The victims all came over to shake his hand, one woman bemoaning that she had not been quick enough and her things were lost. Longbaugh nodded noncommittally, as he was not yet finished.

  He scanned the edge of the crowd and located the “drop bag.” If the drop bag was there, then at least one pickpocket was still at work. He picked him out in a moment. Longbaugh strolled to the corner and grabbed the shoulder of the boy holding the burlap sack. The boy wriggled silently, but Longbaugh’s grip was sure. He now caught the eye of the last pickpocket, the oldest of the boys, most likely their leader. The pickpocket froze to assess Longbaugh’s state of mind. The pickpocket indicated the pocket watch in his fingers, then nodded to the Drop Bag Boy, offering an exchange. Longbaugh nodded his agreement. The pickpocket slipped the watch back into the waistcoat of the man in the straw hat who never knew it had been taken. Longbaugh took the sack from the Drop Bag Boy and gave him a small push toward the pickpocket. The pickpocket offered a respectful grin. The Drop Bag Boy considered Longbaugh with the look of one who had never before known charity. “Professional courtesy,” explained Longbaugh. The boy ran to the pickpocket, who cuffed him alongside his head, then pushed him ahead as they both ran away on cobblestones. Longbaugh looked at the stolen purses and wallets in the sack. A professional operation. When leaving the crime scene, drop the goods in the sack so that if caught, the evidence was off your person.

  “Ma’am,” he said to the sniveling, not-quick-enough woman, “would this be yours?”

  She blessed him and he handed her the sack to allow her the pleasure of returning the rest of the possessions to the others. In the fresh commotion he slipped away. One person watched him go, a small Chinese boy. At first Longbaugh imagined him to be another pickpocket, but all the thieves had been white, and if New York was anything like the West, they would have more readily trusted a freckle-faced girl than a Chink.

  He arrived at the haberdashery. He looked in the window where a robust, headless dressmaker’s dummy was wrapped in a boldly striped suit with a loud waistcoat, stiff collar, and a colorful cravat. The dummy’s torso was on a post, so the trouser legs narrowed to a point at the bottom. He could not imagine himself in those clothes and turned away, but he turned back as the benign shoes at the foot of the dummy caught his eye. They were simple, straightforward, and a reasonable alternative to his boots. He went inside. General stores in the West were jammed with merchandise, filling every spare inch in every corner, and not just with clothing, but with items for the kitchen, bedroom, and garden; children’s toys, bolts of cloth, nails, tools, just about anything you could imagine. This place was only a clothing store for men. What an odd concept. How could there be so many things for a man to wear? Shirt, trousers, shoes, hat. What else did a man need other than a gun? And there was room here to consider each piece of clothing individually without having your eye pulled to something else. Yet there were still too many choices a city man could make to decorate his body. He saw shirts, he saw soft collars and stiff collars, he saw studs, cravats, bow ties, and four-in-hands, he saw pocket squares, ascot pins, underwear, socks, spats, shoes, waistcoats, which the salesman insisted on calling vests, overcoats, top hats, bowler hats, slouch hats, newsboy caps, skimmers, as well as a collection of “off the rack” suits. The salesman was an enthusiastic sort, proud of the public service he performed by offering quality goods for sale.

  “I take it, sir, you are here for a new look. Not that I object to the rustic. Your clothing almost appears as if you had actually come from out west.”

  Despite being daunted by the variety of choices, Longbaugh was entertained. “Yes. A new look. I am done playing cowboy.”

  “Excellent choice. I’ll have you fixed up in no time. Let’s start with a suit, shall we, and we can build the rest of your look off that.”

  “Something to blend in.” Longbaugh felt lucky to have managed the courage to steer the conversation to his own preferences.

  The salesman disguised his disappointment. “Of course, sir. Some prefer not to stand out, to make their statement more subtly.”

  “I like the dark one.” Longbaugh pointed.

  “Navy blue, a classic, excellent choice, you have a wonderful eye, sir.”

  Longbaugh knew what the salesman was doing, but he was flattered all the same.

  He tried on the suit’s jacket, and the salesman assessed him. “You’re the sort
of man who can handle color. You must see this vest.” He moved toward something splashy, one eye on Longbaugh’s reaction. Longbaugh gave him a quiet look of dismissal and the salesman immediately veered to a different, less obvious vest. At that, Longbaugh thought he might have a chance to walk out wearing something he liked.

  He lifted the jacket off Longbaugh’s shoulders and draped it over the back of a chair, then fit him with a soft collar and shirt. He stood back and assessed his work, “Yes, we’re coming along fine now,” stepped in close and reached for his bandanna, “Maybe try it without this,” Longbaugh’s hand caught his wrist and the salesman’s head bowed, “but why would you? olive is your color, in fact I have a neck cloth to complement it, olive and lavender are a very common combination.” Longbaugh adjusted the bandanna to rest flat under his new shirt. It had grown so thin with age that it was almost as if it wasn’t there. Nevertheless, he would have felt undressed if it was gone.

  He chose the shoes he had seen in the window and learned they had rubber soles. They were too low to the ground for his taste, but any shoe would be that way after his boots. They were remarkably quiet when walking. The salesman made a comment about factory bosses loving those heels as they were able to sneak up on workers, a comment Longbaugh did not fully understand.

  He topped off his outfit with a bowler hat, but angled it rakishly.

  The salesman wrapped his old clothes, hat, and boots in brown paper. Longbaugh tucked them under his arm and returned to the street. His step was awkward as he adjusted to the low rubber heels and saw that the same Chinese boy, leaning on a railing partway down the block, resisted laughing at him.

  He made eye contact, but the boy did not come closer. He also did not turn away.

  “Hey?” said Longbaugh.

  The boy looked at him skeptically.

  “You ever hear of an Eiffel Tower?”

  The boy gave him a short nod.

  “Okay, just making sure he didn’t make it up.”