Mirkwood: A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien

by Стив Хиллард

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Like?”

  “A … dame.”

  The sneery way he said it was so stupid it was funny, like a bad amateur Bogey-impressionist.

  The man was creepy, but there was no basis to hold him. His processing form made that clear. This one would have to be thrown back in to the sea.

  “You want to get out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Looks like you’ll be out tomorrow afternoon.”

  Bossier got up and left.

  A guard returned Barren to the group lockup. Once there, Barren persuaded one burly inmate to retrieve some scissors stashed in a wall crevice. The man, a hardened felon who specialized in brutalizing his victims, cut and snipped Barren’s hair with the careful detail and pandering chit-chat of a docile barber. He fashioned it as Barren indicated, pointing to a cluster of detainees with Mohawks. He then used soap and a little blue scraper to meticulously shave Barren’s beard.

  Thus transformed, Barren sat on the edge of his cot, feeling the strange tingle of newly exposed skin and the anticipation of a stalk. A hunt that would result in his prize.

  At ten the next evening, after four days at Riker’s Island, Barren was released back into the city. He was now equipped with an educational jumpstart, second hand clothes, and twenty dollars in his pocket. Ready for primetime. He was even starting to think in modern vernacular.

  Chapter 11

  OCTOBER 20

  Just as Barren emerged from Riker’s Island, the train carrying Cadence plunged into its last night run before arriving in the city. She fidgeted and worried. She was happy to be getting there and anxious about the strangeness that seemed to stalk her.

  She looked at the black glass and cut her eyes away. Don’t stare out that window. Not after last night. She put her head on the Amtrak pillow, relaxed into the gentle rocking movement, and sought the refuge of sleep.

  She awoke at five in the morning, stirred by something vague, perhaps only the train jostling, and obscured by an urgent need to pee. She leaned up from her reclined seat and looked both ways down the aisle. The overhead lights were dim and the absence of reading lights meant the few passengers were all asleep. 9-11 Man was a snoring shadow sprawled across his seats. She eased up and looked at her own nest. She shrugged and got up and then stopped. The valise was in plain sight. She leaned over and pulled it up and moved it down two rows and shoved it beneath an empty seat. She pulled a blanket from the overhead and disguised the valise as a dark pile. Now she really did have to go, and she headed for the women’s bathroom in the next car.

  As she slid the lavatory door shut, the light flicked on and the mirror over the sink caught her movement. She looked at it. It was blighted from the inside with some amoebic gray sprawl that ate the upper left corner. She sat and her face moved down and stared back from the mirror bottom. It seemed to loom up from the sink, obscenely decapitated and somehow balanced. Just to be sure, she made full eye contact. A woman knows her face, and the one looking back at her was ever so slightly off. She thought about talking to this image but hesitated. Who knows what truths might spill out in such an encounter?

  She stared for a long time, then changed her mind. She inquired out loud, “Why are you doing this?”

  Her voice answered, “Because if I don’t, I’ll stay like I am now … empty. When you are an orphan, when that full truth dawns on you, all the other truths you don’t know and can never ask about get really big. If Jess is alive, he’s the only shot I’ve got. He’s someone real to ask the hows and whys. Maybe he’s even someone to blame.” She thought for a second and came to her bottom line. “If I don’t do this now, I never will.”

  “And?”

  “And, there’s something else going on. I can feel it. It’s like … there’s something out there after him …” Then she let it slip out “… and me.”

  She stopped, embarrassed but mostly fearing that the image might actually take up its half of the conversation independently. Thankfully, seeing no further response, she retreated to her old cynical refuge. She pursed her lips and raised her hands, palms up, and gave her reflection a taunting “who knows?” shrug. She finished her toilet and her image duly rose as she stood.

  She turned her back to the mirror to unlock the door. It was stuck. She jiggered it and then slammed the door with one knee. Beneath the banging and the metallic rattles, she heard a splash of water. This was followed by a liquid, squelching sound, and a soft splish, as if a foot was stepping carefully into water. Her mind imagined that her “second” was crawling out of the mirror and wash basin to meet her. Only it wasn’t anything like her own image anymore. It was some deep-sea gargoyle rising behind her. At any second a pallid, fish-fingered arm would piston out to grip her shoulder. She couldn’t turn to look. Not to see that. Her hands jiggered the lock over and over, like some dumb wind-up toy, until it fell open and she stumbled out. Turning to kick the door closed, she saw only an innocent wet spot on the floor.

  Nerves, she thought, just settle down.

  As she re-entered her car, she heard the doors at the other end swoosh. A small figure, not a child, looked back from the shadows and disappeared into the next car. She looked at her seat row and began to move fast down the aisle. The train rocked and creaked. She made her way toward her seat, two-arming along the aisle seat backs for balance. 9-11 Man was still snoring. She looked down at her nest, her sanctuary. Something was wrong. Her backpack was now on the seat next to the aisle.

  Her hands were like frightened birds as she reached down and picked it up. Makeup and toiletries spilled out of the newly open side pocket. Her pocketbook, still with money and IDs, lay on the floor. Jess’s journal had been rifled, but appeared to all be there. Then she panicked. The valise! For a moment she forgot where it was. She edged backwards to its hiding spot. She tore at the blankets.

  It was exactly where she left it. She checked the clasp, then opened it. The contents were just as she’d left them. She blew in relief and took it back to her seat. Just a petty thief, she thought.

  She pondered this for a few moments, and then went to the emergency phone and called the conductor. After awhile, he arrived and conducted a desultory and inconclusive search of the train. She didn’t talk about the valise. She didn’t tell him that, just maybe, this was no random snatch and steal attempt. Who would believe such a thing?

  Maybe someone who believed in these ancient documents and the Dark Lord’s words. Someone who knew about his goals and his many emissaries. But that’s not me. I’m jumpy, but this is just a storybook, she reassured herself.

  At dawn the train, chugging and spent, labored into Penn Station. The platform was packed with day-trippers, commuters and visiting families.

  As other passengers began reaching for their bags, Cadence stayed nested in her seat, tidied up now and still opposite 9-11 man. They exchanged knowing nods and smiles in comment on the passengers walking down the aisle toward the exit door.

  When it was time, she got up and reached out and shook his hand.

  “Julian, it’s been nice traveling with you. I hope you find your place to finally get off the train.”

  He smiled in return. “You know, I’m feeling more confident about that. I’m going back to the Midwest. Maybe … oh … Topeka. That seems safe.”

  “I think it would be great. Who knows? Take a day and sleep in a bed at a hotel or a bed and breakfast. Let the train just go on without you. Listen to it click-clack and whistle away. Leave your burden on the train. Just let it go.”

  He nodded. People were waiting for her to clear the aisle.

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  She trundled down the aisle, hesitated at the exit door. Below her was the step stool. New York, here I am! She stepped down and kept going along the platform, her feet already lighter.

  Rumbles of other trains and the incomprehensible sounds from the P.A. speakers
mixed with the shuffle of the crowd with rollerbags and sneakers and clackety heels. The crowd broke; she saw daylight and headed for it.

  She surfaced, bag in hand, to meet a mild Indian summer afternoon. A sweep of fresh air, alive with moisture and carrying the myriad smells of the city, swirled around her. As she breathed in the energy of that wind, she felt the city’s trademark, the palpable, buzzing presence of possibility. Anything might happen here. There would be no easy bargain but there would be commerce. That alone gave her hope. Here, her pent-up energy could be focused. She could get down to the real search.

  Her little map from the Algonquin website said the hotel was less than ten blocks away. After four days locked up on the train, this would be easy. She picked up her bags and struck out due north. Once she got there, she would unload her stuff at the hotel and go directly to her first clue.

  As the breeze kicked up and the sky darkened with an incoming thunderstorm, she found the hotel. The Algonquin was a spritely, fourteen-story dowager built in 1902. It looked smart and well-taken-care-of. She checked in on Mel’s tab, got organized and immediately left. It took her less than an hour to find the place she had travelled two thousand miles to see.

  She stood alone outside the West End Bar.

  A raw wind whipped sudden rain along Broadway at the corner of 110th Street. She looked at the yellowed scrap of menu in her hand.

  The place right where it should be. Cadence wrestled the door against the wind and stepped inside. The place was busy, shadowy regulars installed on their usual stools. Behind the bar a man with Popeye arms bulging out of rolled-up sleeves, bathed in weird glow-light from under the bar. Gruff and balding, he fit the place.

  She felt unexpectedly at home in places like this, where the dark wood-paneled walls had absorbed maybe seventy years of tobacco and beer smells, giving them back in the day, taking in more at night. Gin joint sounds filled the air — small talk, jukebox, clinking and washing, liquid pouring, imported beer bottles gasping into life as their caps tinkled off the opener.

  She saw an empty bar stool and claimed it as the door opened again behind her. She could feel the wet street air swirl in and mix with the saloon smells. A figure moved in hitches and starts from the door over to the back corner, melting into a booth.

  The barkeep moved towards her. “Yes, ma’am?”

  She fidgeted with her bag, ordered a Manhattan, and looked up to see two things. First, the guy’s face lacked a left eye. A deep vertical scar transected the socket. Second, the hands placing the beer and glass on the bar lacked a finger. Left, ring.

  “Uh …” is all she could get out for a second.

  “Relax, ma’am, I’m not near the ogre I look.” His voice was friendly and low-key, which only lowered her blush to a paler shade of vermillion. He moved off to another customer and she looked at the menu scrap she had pulled from her pocket:

  WEST END BAR

  14423 Broadway

  New York, NY

  June 14, 1970

  Daily Specials:

  Meatloaf Dinner, all the trimmings $1.89

  Chicken Pot Pie with salad $1.29

  Hunter’s Stew with salad $1.49

  And there it was scrawled along the bottom:

  I must depart for England tomorrow. The burden is now yours. I have helped by hiding the key, the heart of the power that lurks in this trove. This task I completed today. There is little else I can do now. I fear they are coming. Keep it secret.

  JRRT

  “So what brings you here?” The barkeep had returned.

  “Well, can I ask you a question first?”

  “Shoot. First one’s free.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Me, on and off for fifteen years probably. What, you writing a book?”

  “Close, but not exactly.”

  Something dawned on her, looking at his left hand splayed across the bar wood. The missing piece of finger might be tied to the eye scar, like his hand had shot up to ward off whatever happened. Whatever had happened, he must have seen it coming.

  Who would mess with this guy? She thought and then answered, someone with a big knife.

  “The reason I asked, you came in here like you were looking for something besides a drink. Or company.”

  “OK, I’m trying to find out something about this….” She slid the menu scrap in front of him. “It concerns a relative, my grandfather, the person who got the note at the bottom. Probably looked in his twenties then. Any ideas?”

  He was clearly charmed by the vintage menu. It was a few moments before he answered. “We still do a Hunter’s Stew special, but otherwise this is way before my time.”

  “The owner maybe?”

  “Nope, they’re an investment group now, buying up distressed places around the upper West Side.”

  “I hear this place was something of a landmark.”

  “Still is. Lots of odd folks come in here — me excluded. Students, writers, tattoo artists, Nobel laureates, Columbia nerd-types, retirees, and invalids living in rent-controlled apartments who show up once a week. They order cocktails no one remembers — Sidecars, Old-Fashioneds, you know. They all come in and out. Gets to be a pattern from this side of the bar.”

  “So what writers?”

  He pointed. “Kerouac wrote On the Road right over there by the window. Jay McInerney supposedly wrote parts of Bright Lights, Big City in here. A bunch of music types hang out from time to time. Bono had lunch here with some save-the-world type. Harold Ramis and Bill Murray hung out when they filmed Ghostbusters up the street. Oh yeah, the guys who made up Sha-Na-Na. They were in the Woodstock movie. Definitely before your time.”

  Cadence nodded, recalling greasy, juvenile delinquent rockers on stage. She pointed at the note again. “Well, I think the JRRT initials are Tolkien’s, you know, the Lord of the Rings writer.”

  “Huh, sure, but never heard anyone say he’d been here.”

  “But he has to have been, don’t you think, from the writing on the menu?”

  “Yeah, yeah … Hey! You may be right. The bartender that retired from here, Vincent, once talked about how some famous English writer, I think it was Tolkien or Tidwell, was in here. The guy said the place reminded him of his pub back home. Had a regular thing there with a group of writers, I guess. The Inkspots, I think it was.”

  “That’s a singing group. How about the Inklings?”

  “Dunno. If you say so. I just remember the part about the pub. Which means he probably came in here several times. Vincent always kept track of the quasi-famous types who wandered in here.”

  “So, any thoughts how to pick up a trail on this?”

  “Colder than that well digger’s ass in Montana. Or a … oh well you get it. Let me think on it.” He drifted away, doing a turn at his job.

  Cadence looked around, observing people moving here and there. There was something odd about the place, and the next moment she noticed a dark shadow in the corner that made her neck hairs stiffen.

  A sliver of light from the swinging kitchen door played on and off the crumpled figure. He wore a ratty ski hat and old coat. His head was oriented like he was looking out at her. In truth, she realized, he looked to be a homeless person who had come in for coffee. The bartender brought him a glass of water and a cup of coffee, saying a few words. Cadence gazed out the window at a taxi pulled curbside, its hazard lights blinking madly in the rain.

  “Ma’am?” She jerked, surprised that the bartender was suddenly back.

  “Coats says he can help.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You were just looking at him.”

  She looked over there again. Same mysterious, neck-hair-raising gaze from a pool of shadow.

  “So what’d he say?”

  “For you to quit talking so loud and come over there.”

  As she slowly got up from the bar stool, she was watched by another.

  Since his release from Riker’s Island, Barren’s search f
or her had taken the remainder of the day and into the night, until this very moment.

  Arriving outside a few minutes ago, he knew it was an inn from the mingled smells of alcohol, smoke, and the urine of human woe that swirled at the rain-sotted threshold. He pretty much understood the words inscribed above the door: WEST END BAR. He went in.

  He had no need of weapons — not yet, as he was armed with passing command of their language and knowledge of their vanities. His hair was cut short except for the crude ruff striping front to back, like one of the guys in Rikers. He sat down at one end of the bar.

  Just as a stag in Mirkwood will twist its ears and raise its antlered head above the oak brush to satisfy its curiosity at an interloper, so did these people twitch before the threat of his very presence.

  The young black-haired woman at the end of the bar fidgeted and looked behind her anxiously. She was in all likelihood the one. She talked to a scarred innkeeper and then they both looked at a bearded figure hidden at a table in a dark corner. He was different, not one of the moon-faces, but no threat.

  Barren bent his head slightly to eavesdrop on their discussion. Satisfied, he got up and went back out in the rain and entered a waiting taxi. It was time to learn to drive.

  As Cadence approached the booth in the corner, the fragrant derelict reached out and literally yanked her into the seat beside him.

  “Understand that you will be watched!”

  Whether it was the words he whispered or the overwhelming stink that startled her, she kept her composure. She could see his face better now, even with the ski hat pulled down. He was a caricature of the Big Apple Homeless Man — unshaven, his face deeply fissured, hiding within layers of dank old coats — with barely enough money rattling in his pockets to get by, even if the city shelters were his home every night.

  “I …”

  “I know what you seek.” He quickly leaned to the side, peering at her from tabletop level. “Acoustics. Sitting here I can listen to every conversation in this room. That’s why this is my spot!”