Waking the Dead

by Scott Spencer

  “How do you mean?”

  “In your work. Isn’t that where the prison is? Don’t you have men sent down there in your work?” He furrowed his eyebrows and jutted his chin out, in that slightly humorous way people do when they mean to say, Are you listening to me?

  “I’m running for Congress now, Steven.”

  He reached across the table and squeezed my shoulder. “That’s wonderful, Fielding! I couldn’t be happier for you.” He nodded his head and squinted. “It’s just like you planned.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

  “Father Stanton mentioned nothing about this in his letter. I wonder if he knows. Did you tell him when you saw him?”

  “I don’t remember.To be honest with you, I barely remember anything I said to him.”

  “What were you doing there? He said it was the middle of the night.”

  “Following Sarah. I saw her in a restaurant. I was with some reporters, my campaign manager—”

  “Sarah?You mean … our Sarah?”

  “That’s right. Anyhow, I was sitting there. And I happened to look over and there she was.”

  “I’m not getting this. What are you trying to say?”

  “Look, Steven. I mean, Father Steve. I haven’t had a night’s sleep in … I don’t know how long. I’ve been flying all over the country trying to put this together. I haven’t eaten. OK? I am trying to get this straight. Don’t fuck around with me. Can we at least have that? Do not fuck around with me. It’s too late in the game for that.”

  “What game, Fielding?You’re ranting.”

  “I know I am. I can hear myself. For pity’s sake, Steven. Help me.”

  “I want to help you, Fielding. But what do you want?”The water came to a boil and the kettle began to shudder over the gas jet. Mileski got up and turned off the flame.

  “Just stop holding the truth back from me.That’s all over now. It’s just completely over. I want to know everything that happened. And I have to know where she is.”

  Mileski folded his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. I had always considered that a signal of an impending falseness. “You want to know where who is?” asked Mileski. “Are you … do you mean Sarah?” The incredulity in his voice lifted me out of my chair. I raised my hands over my head and brought them slamming down onto the table. The table leapt toward me, touching me on the legs. I tossed it onto its side and raced toward Mileski, reaching up and grabbing his throat with my stiff, outstretched fingers.

  “Tell me where she is,” I said through my teeth. I felt my own saliva on my chin. Mileski’s hands were on my chest, pushing me back, but for the moment I was too strong for him. Now his hands were on mine, trying to unclasp them from his windpipe. “Where is she?” I screamed into his face.

  “With God, Fielding,” he said, choking. He ripped my hands off him and pushed me back hard, sending me stumbling, trying to keep my balance. “You crazy bastard,” he said, rubbing his throat and shaking his head. “What are you trying to do?”

  “I just want you to tell me where she is. I know she’s alive. I’ve known it for weeks. Here.” I put my hand over my heart. “And I saw her. And then she called me. She explained the whole thing to me.That it was Seny in the car. But then we were cut off before she could tell me where she is. And you see I have to find her.”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Fielding. You never have. If what you’re saying is true. If she is alive. And if I was aware of it, in on the plot, then why would I ever tell you about it? You were never really a part of what we were doing. You didn’t understand it. It seemed—I don’t know. Inconvenient. You mostly cared that someone might associate you with us. You felt only fear, Fielding. And you bred it in others. You wanted to take her confidence away. You tried to wedge your ego needs between her soul and her faith.You had no idea what she was.”

  “I love her.”

  “That doesn’t give you a special claim. So many people loved her.”

  “Do you want me to get on my knees and beg you?”

  “I think the real question is, Do you want to get on your knees and beg me?”

  “You are so secure, Steven,” I said. I moved toward him. He tensed slightly. I forced my body to relax and he relaxed, too. I stepped still closer to him. It was working. “I am much, much smarter than you are.”

  “I agree with you there,” said Mileski. “You’re brainy.”

  “You believe in resurrections. You believe in miracles. You believe in the fucking Red Sea parting and talking snakes and virgin births. But you haven’t shown the slightest interest or curiosity in what I’ve been telling you here today. And that can mean only one thing.”

  “Yeah? What do you think it means?” he said. There was a slight film of huskiness in his voice. He was working too hard to keep his gaze steady.

  “It has to mean you knew all along. You know she’s alive. None of this is news to you. And you know where she is.” I gave him a moment to respond but when he shook his head no that was all the waiting I could do. I lunged at him with all my desperate and insufficient strength. But he had at least sixty pounds on me and one of his fists was the size of both of mine. He twisted away from me, reared back, and hit me square in the face. There was a moment of wild, scarlet, throbbing pain and then all consciousness was gone like a dragon swallowing its own tail.

  15

  IT WAS EITHER evening or night. I really didn’t know.The sky was black granite when my cab pulled in front of my apartment. I looked up. The lights were on and someone was keeping watch out of the window. The curtain wavered and a human form stepped out of view. When I paid the driver and added an acceptable tip to the fare, I was left with twenty-five cents to my name. It was weirdly exhilarating to be that broke. It made me remember a time in Boston, sixteen or seventeen years before, when I was in college and momentarily without a nighttime job. I had been plunged immediately into absolute pennilessness, as if the entire enterprise of my life was built on ice so thin that it wasn’t really ice at all but more of a cool sheen. And until I got the job as night manager of the pool hall on Central Square (where jug-band musicians played nineball with local Irish hitters) I was reduced to patrolling pay phones in search of forgotten refunds, a degrading but strangely habit-forming enterprise that had me walking ten miles a day through that anemic Boston spring.

  As I reached the third-floor landing, the door to my apartment opened up. I saw the wedge of light cast itself against the wall and then into that wedge came the shape of a human shadow. I stopped, holding onto the banister, and waited. I could hear my own heart beating, clanging away like a hammer against a radiator. The head of the shadow turned and then the shadow began to grow, and bend, and then it was indistinct, just a darkness. Whoever it was coming forward, heading toward the railing to look down. I stood there, waiting. I looked down at my shoes. There was a latticework of white snow and salt stain on them. And then I looked up again and saw Caroline’s face peering down at me.

  “What happened to you?” she said, her voice a braid of annoyance and compassion.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “It looks worse than it is.”

  “Now you sound like Danny,” she said. “Well, come on. We’ve been hysterical wondering where you were.”

  I came up to the landing and she put her arms around me. She winced as she looked into my face. “You’re bleeding,” she said, touching the whiskery indentation between my lower lip and my chin. “What hit you?”

  “A priest,” I said.

  “A priest?”

  “Who else is in there?” I said, looking at the half-open door to my apartment.

  “Tony, Isaac, Juliet, and Dad.”

  “Oh Jesus, Caroline. Dad?”

  “I’m sorry. Blame yourself, though. I called home, thinking maybe you’d gone there. Then he flipped out and flew out here. He got here two hours ago.” Caroline sensed me about to back up and she caught me by the arm. “Come on. Whatever’s broken, we’ll fix.”
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br />   “How is he?”

  “Dad? He’s said maybe two words to me. He’s engrossed with Isaac. I think they’re having a competition over who can take credit for the wonder that is Fielding Pierce.” She tugged at me but I resisted and I garnered her close and held on to her with a desperation that hadn’t much to do with what we normally call love.

  “It’s falling in on every side, Caroline,” I said. “She’s out there waiting for me.”

  “Oh God, Fielding,” she said, holding me close. “You’ve got to stop this. You just have to let it go.”

  I shook my head but didn’t say any more. There was very little point after all. We walked into the apartment.

  “Tony!” Caroline called out.

  At the sound of her voice, Tony came quickly down the narrow hall connecting the living room with the entrance foyer. He looked sloppy, unfocused; he was wearing a black and white T-shirt printed to look somehow like a piano keyboard. He was holding a glass of beer in one hand, a cigar in the other. “Caroline?” he said, with some real urgency, as if in his scheme of things she was always in imminent danger. Then he saw me and stopped. He took a swallow of his beer, a toke off his cigar. “Where the fuck have you been? You made me look like shit.”

  “That’s something one man can never do for another, Tony,” I said.

  “Fielding,” said Caroline, in her older sister accent.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before you wanted to blow this fucking election? I would have at least covered my ass.”

  “What’s with this guy and all the excreta imagery?” I said to Caroline, putting my arm around her waist. (The truth was, I was wobbling and didn’t want it to show.)

  Just then Dad appeared, standing at the far end of the hallway with his legs astride and his hands on his hips, an aging colossus. “Are you OK?” he said, his full dark voice floating down the hall like ectoplasm.

  “I’m fine,” I said, breathing deeply, coming toward him. I could see him registering the disarray, the panic, the lack of direction, and even the slight blur of failure coming off me. He swallowed, looked me up and down, and then opened his arms to me. I strode toward him and accepted his embrace. His muscles tensed; like a high-school boy, he didn’t want me to feel any softness.

  Caroline, Dad, Tony, and I walked into the living room. Isaac was on the sofa and as soon as he saw me he reached for the phone. He quickly punched up the number and said, “He’s here. I’ll talk to you later.” Then he hung up, crossed his legs, folded his arms over his chest. “Were you in some sort of automobile accident?” Isaac asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “You could have called,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said. “I could have done a lot of things.”

  “Oh-oh,” my father said, softly, involuntarily. He could feel things falling apart; he couldn’t understand how I could talk to a man like Isaac in this way.

  “Look,” I said, “if we’re going to talk, plan, then I have to get out of these clothes. I’ll be right back.’

  Without waiting for an answer, I walked out of the living room and into the bedroom. I tore off my shirt. What I really wanted was a bath, but I couldn’t make them wait that long. I opened the closet. Juliet’s clothes were not gone, but it seemed there were fewer of them. They had been pushed to one side of the closet and I was certain if I had picked through them I would have discovered that some were missing. A shirt, a blouse, just enough to sustain the separation. And then a few days later, I would probably notice a few other things missing. And that’s how it would go, until she was entirely moved out.

  I went back into the living room with a fresh shirt on. I was barefoot and I saw my feet had been stained by my thirty-six hours in damp maroon socks. Everyone was standing around like rejects from a wax museum. “OK, I’m back,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Tell me what I’ve missed and men let’s get this rolling again.”

  THE NEXT EVENING at eight, ten hours before the polls opened, Bertelli and I met before something called the Greater Hyde Park Citizens’ Forum. The people managing my campaign and the folks running his had arranged for the mini-confrontation about a week before, when Bertelli’s campaign was really taking hold. We were still leading at that time and Tony and the others took a gamble; but now Bertelli had pulled even or perhaps was a bit ahead, so my staff was weak with relief that the meeting had been organized.

  The meeting was originally scheduled to take place at Ida Noyes Hall, one of the University buildings. But as the evening approached there were indications of twice, even three times the turnout they’d been expecting, so near the last minute the meeting was moved to a defunct movie theater in the center of the district, a gaudy, naive place called the Damascus. Sarah and I had gone to see The French Connection the week before the Damascus became the ornate tax loss it was to remain.

  I was driven over by Tony, with Caroline next to him in the front seat. I was wedged in back with Isaac on one side of me and my father on the other. My father sat bolt upright, with his hands folded on his lap; Isaac had his legs crossed and he held his chin in his hand, looking glumly out the window.

  “What do you think, Isaac?” asked my father. “Should he come on strong or act like an incumbent?”

  “A little of both, I’d say, Eddie,” answered Isaac, without looking around.

  Dad shrugged and winked at me. “I see you’re in good hands,” he said.

  “I’ll take the alley around,” Tony said. “That way we can slip in the back entrance.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Isaac. He sounded weirdly languid, as if he’d taken sedatives. “This isn’t a stage show. We’ll walk in like everybody else.”

  “I think it’s going to be a zoo, Isaac,” Tony said.

  “I don’t understand you, Tony,” said Isaac. “Have you been organizing Fielding’s appearances so as to minimize contact between him and the voters? That’s a rather unique concept.”

  “Tony’s been working very hard, Isaac,” said Caroline. “I don’t think he deserves that kind of remark.”

  “I’m so relieved the Pierces are here to put everything straight.” Isaac sighed. He began swatting the end of his nose with his fingertip, rapidly, back and forth, like a boxer working out on a punching bag.

  “Who do you figure comes to a meeting like this?” asked my father. None of us knew whom he was asking and so no one answered. “Isaac,” he then added.

  Isaac stopped swatting the end of his nose and now was stroking it, as if to revive it after the punishment it had endured. “Who?” he asked. “Well, our people who’ve worked in the campaign. And precinct captains who’ll be getting the vote out. And poll watchers. And press, of course. And the membership of the Hyde Park Forum. They’ve got five hundred members on paper.”

  “But what I’m asking,” said Dad, “is, you know, what about just regular rank-and-file people? I’m getting the feeling there’s a large uncommitted vote out there.”

  “Where?” asked Isaac, suddenly turning his head with a kind of birdlike quickness. His eyes caught the light of a passing car.

  “In the district,” said my father. “People, just people.“

  “I mean, where did you get the feeling there was a large uncommitted vote? Do you have some information the rest of us lack?”

  There was silence in the car. Caroline slipped off her shoe and scratched the bottom of her foot—her most timeworn nervous habit.

  Finally Dad touched my arm. “Don’t you think there’s a lot of undecided voters out there, Fielding?”

  I didn’t answer. I was suddenly and awfully aware of something inside me. It felt as if my fear were patrolling my body, looking to grab at the lever controlling my nerves. And now it was getting close, closer; now it found it at last and had its hand upon it. I started to tremble.

  “Don’t you, Fielding?” asked Dad again. There was a burr of discouragement in his voice.

  “Yes, I guess so,” I said.


  “That is just completely contrary to what we already know,” said Isaac. If he’d taken a drug it was wearing off; his voice was sharp again. “I’d say there was at most ten percent undecided now.”

  “Does that mean we win or lose?” asked Caroline.

  “It means we win, unless Fielding loses all ten percent.”

  Dad looked away. He blinked rapidly and folded his arms over his chest. I could feel him retreating into himself; his heavy feelings scraped like enormous pieces of furniture.

  “I look at it like this,” I said. “Every vote is essentially undecided until it’s cast. I don’t take anything for granted and I don’t give anything up.”

  “The homos will never vote for you,” said Tony, with a laugh.

  “Perhaps they will,” I said. “I hope so. I think I deserve their support.”

  My father smiled and nodded his head, very pleased with me, as if I’d said something that might make its way into some future biography. My knee knocked into his and he glanced down; I was shaking. He pursed his lips; he judged people as if he were a samurai when they betrayed weakness, not knowing how often his own showed through.

  “I’m up for this, Dad,” I said, pressing down on my legs to calm them down. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Tony turned the corner and started applying the brakes. We were there. I kept my eyes closed. It had crossed my mind a thousand times during the day that Sarah might very well be in the audience tonight and now that we were here I was all but certain of it.

  “I know,” he said, in as intimate a voice as he could manage. “You always come through when the chips are down.”

  We walked into the old theater. There was no time to look, no time to remember. Isaac was at my side, Tony was behind me. The Hyde Park Forum people had set up a literature table, selling pamphlets which were transcripts of the various debates they had sponsored. Isaac had me by the elbow, guiding me toward a side entrance to the auditorium, as if I were a blind virtuoso. Falling in with us was Henry Shamansky. He was with his wife, a dark-haired woman with a raspberry mouth and a pixie haircut. “Give ’em hell, Fielding,” he said, balling his hand into a fist and grimacing, showing his square, nicotine-tinted teeth. Then came Sonny Marchi, the governor’s son-in-law, who’d been using my campaign as a part of his never-ending pretense of having something to do. He looked certifiable tonight: his hair was slicked back; he smelled of coconut-scented hair conditioner, and the lapels of his plaid sports jacket were festooned with my campaign buttons. “Good to see you, good to see you,” Isaac chanted to Sonny, meaning, I guess, that Isaac took Marchi’s presence as symbolic of the governor’s surviving good wishes.