The Fugitivities

by Jesse McCarthy

  Before he knew it, Jonah was bounding down the stone stairs and making his way back across the courtyard and into the house. Laura was singing to herself, and he followed her voice to the kitchen where she was preparing dinner. As he entered the singing stopped. She could read on his face the end of a line of thought.

  “You’re not staying.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  She did not appear wounded, but moved into a suspended pause of judgment, a stay against a blow.

  “I should have…I should let you out then.”

  “Laura, I have to leave tomorrow. Could I see you once more before I go? Tomorrow morning. Please. It’s very important.”

  “What for?”

  “I have something. Something important to give you. I don’t have it here with me. If you can meet me tomorrow morning at the Basques’, I can leave it with you. And also, I want to get a chance to properly say goodbye.”

  “You could say it now. You are saying it now.”

  “I know, I’m sorry to be like this. I’m confused, really, I’m afraid…”

  “You’re afraid. Well, I’m glad you could at least say it. Go on, then, I have things to finish up here. I’ll show you out.”

  She walked him back out to the front and for a moment stood regarding him out on the street.

  “Will you promise me to come tomorrow, at nine o’clock?” he asked.

  “You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “So, you’ll come?”

  “I always come for the men who deserve it.”

  She had no more words for him, and he found himself drifting down the foreign streets alone, one cigarette after another lighting the way to his relative shelter.

  When he got back to his room at El Vasco, he couldn’t sleep. He opened a page in his travel journal and started writing a long letter to Arna. When he looked up, pale dawn was already in the window. He went down into the waking streets and made his way to the only internet café he knew in the old city, hurrying in case Laura decided to come early. He wanted to check his mail and look up as much useful information as he could find about Buenos Aires. He wondered how Octavio was doing. There had been no word since his arrival in Montevideo.

  His inbox was overflowing, mostly with the usual spam. There were several emails from his mother and one from his father but he did not want to deal with anything from his parents right then, and he did not open them. More pressingly there was an email from Nate and an email from Isaac. With a sinking heart, he saw that Arna had not written him back.

  Jonah considered writing her a brief note. He opened Isaac’s email instead.

  Sorry to break the news this way, man, but I’ve had to make some choices. With the way things are I’ve come to the decision that New York just isn’t for me. I haven’t told you about everything that’s gone down at the school but suffice to say I’m done with that. I’m just not happy in the work, and everything with the shooting and the protests and all the crazy shit that’s popping off in this city—I’m done with it, man. I don’t want no part of it anymore. Also I’ve been talking for a while now with this sister I met online. She’s from Atlanta, works for this label down there and she’s been trying to get me to come down and see her for like forever, and last week while the shit was hectic I decided to take off and see her. And, you know, she’s right. It’s beautiful in the ATL. Reminds me of home, except the music scene is off the charts right now. A nigga could really get somewhere if he put his mind to it and had the right connections, and I’m feeling like I want to give this music shit a real chance. It’s always been something I’ve loved and I feel like I have what it takes to do well in the business, especially right now, working with artists, scouting talent, maybe even producing records. So, I know this is kinda sudden, but I’ve decided to move down there. I’ve already put in notice at work. Lease is up soon, and the demand is so high here—I’ve talked to the management and they can’t wait to get rid of my black ass. Not sure when you’ll be back, but the one thing I wanted to touch base about is these letters, man. Your French girl been sending you mad longhand correspondence. I know you’ll want those so I was thinking I would forward them to your place in Paris. So, send me your address when you get this. Hope all is well otherwise with you. I’ll miss our times hanging out, man, I really will. But when you get your shit together, come on down to the real South America to see a brotha. You’ll always have a place to stay with me. And I can show you a good time too. There’s a whole world down there y’all don’t know nothing about.

  —Isaac

  Thus he learned the friendship he had made in New York was dissolving. There should have been nothing terribly dramatic about it. It was, from a certain point of view, logical and maybe even predictable. Friends moved from city to city all the time, and people held on to friendships as they could. And yet the news brought a rush of sadness to his chest. He reread the email, stunned, and then sent a brief reply saying how cool it was to hear about the move, and that he was excited for him. He gave his coordinates in Paris and hit send. Caught in a blank anger, he went to sign off when he realized he hadn’t checked the note from Nate. To his dismay, the missive was fraternal and warm, and it struck like a dagger.

  Good brother,

  I was thinking about you again today and wondering when you might be coming back. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the shooting and the protests in the city, but you’ve been missing out on some amazing stuff. Folks are mad as hell and taking it to the streets in ways I haven’t seen since like the seventies. I know a smart young cat like yourself could be involved in it. I wish I could be, but honestly, I’m too old for this mess. Besides I got my hands full with my after-school ball program and all that. My offer still stands—would love to have you up here working with me. It could even turn into like an internship, a hoops fellowship. Kinda like the sound of that! Are you still in Montevideo? I can’t lie, I do still wonder sometimes if she’s really out there. I gotta stop with these fantasies. But what can we do? It’s like Janet says, that’s the way love goes…

  —Nate

  Jonah felt his head spin. He knew he had to tell Laura to leave Salvador. He had to give her Nathaniel’s letter. And he knew that as soon as he did, he would have to leave Montevideo.

  Back in his room at El Vasco, he packed his things. Nathaniel’s letter had gotten slightly crumpled in his bag. The envelope had not been sealed, and the fold lay flattened on its back, revealing a bit of paper marked with Nathaniel’s handwriting. With a flush of shame, he pulled it out. There it was, his silent travel companion. He nervously unfolded the paper.

  Dear Laura,

  I’ll start this the only way I know how. I don’t know if you will ever get this letter. Probably not. In a way, it’s as if I’m writing to you from the past or maybe even a past life. I want to leave a record of my thoughts, so that if by chance you do read this, you will have some idea, at least some understanding of the man I am now. What can I tell you about that man? I’m writing to you today from New York City. From my desk in the heights of the Bronx, the city runs down the Hudson River away from me into steel and glass and fumes of Manhattan. It’s not at all like Paris, which I can recall as clearly as this view. I can still see you standing outside the tabac, your hands moving as you talk at a café table, the shape your body made under the sheets, your books, the smell of cigarettes and plaster on the rue des Cinq-Diamants. That was Paris. It was our city, but it was your home. This is mine.

  If you came you would find it’s too hot in the summer, and too damn cold in the winter. It’s too crowded and too poor and too rich…and every year it seems like things are getting worse, although, in truth, things always seem to be about the same. This is where I was raised, not just in the Bronx, but the whole city. I love the sound of a New York voice. I love the sound of helicopters in the sky, tugboats on the river, yellow
cabs as they jump in and out of lanes, small talk at 125th Street and Lenox, night games at Yankee Stadium, girls in troupes cursing and singing and clapping, the beautiful sound of Spanish on Upper Broadway where they sell platanos and sandía out the side of a Chevy, players pushing Fleetwood Cadillacs through the projects, bass booming. The smell of garbage and the hiss of frying meats, kids clowning around coming out of the corner bodega, brothers talking that talk on the corner, the subway rolling down the Jerome Avenue line. I love the sound of basketball courts at dusk. It’s a sound that takes me way back…I’m talking back to the days of guys that used to play there that we gave names like Big Helicopter, Earl “The Goat,” “Pee Wee” Kirkland, all these legends that I came up playing with in Rucker Park, a place where if your game was tight you went home feeling tall as Kareem. I remember kids used to sit in the trees just to watch Julius Erving rise up through the air from the free-throw line, his arm carrying the ball like a torch of liberty. These things are the stuff my city is made of.

  Laura, there are things I wish you could see. I have children now. Ones I’m teaching what I can in the hopes of doing something to make things change and come out right for once, to try and change the destiny of the kids who grow up on the blocks where I grew up, blocks where half the kids I grew up with are gone, dead, or doing bids upstate. I want so bad for these kids to have a chance to see what I’ve seen, to move through the world different, to see more and know more, and taste the kind of living that they struggle to imagine. And I can see it happen before my eyes one at a time. With all the love the folks in the community show me, I get new students to my basketball clinic every day. They come from all over the Bronx to learn how to play ball, how to improve their game. I always tell them: If you want to improve your game, improve yourself. You are the game. They don’t know how literally I mean it. Sometimes there are fights, and sometimes the play is too rough. I remember how it was when I was coming up. I was small. I used to get knocked around a lot. Had to learn to scrape, had to be better. The game is intuition. You always know before you let go whether it’s going in. You always know when to make the pass before you can think to make it. You know where to be, you feel the ball reach your hands at the top of the key, you fake, you whirl like Earl the Pearl, you open a notch and pop up, the ball is gone, it’s over, sinking in, and you turn away because the game has already moved on. Everyone moves on, and the world doesn’t slow for none of us.

  The other night I went for a walk along the West Side promenade. I stood at the edge of the Hudson and looked up. The lights of the George Washington Bridge parted the night. The sight of the bridge struck me like John Henry’s hammer. I looked up and thought: What is this? What is this giant thing that I am made of? America, wading knee-high in the blood of its own children. Of the African slaves. Of Cherokee and Sioux. Union regiments and Confederate cavalry. Of sharecroppers and lynching blood on the leaves, railroad workers, field hands and migrant farmers, the children of Birmingham and the garbage collectors of Memphis, the people of Vietnam under our napalm and our flamethrowers, the blood of our own sons and daughters. The blood of my ancestors that flows in my veins. All that blood that I know we got to answer for. This imperial force more powerful than Rome. The George Washington Bridge is so awesome, so vast. It’s got to mean something, to portend something that’s still happening, something so big we’ll never be able to imagine the end toward which it is pointing. And then I also feel there’s something austere, even lonely about it. A Miles Davis kind of thing. For Baldwin it’s where a man goes to jump when he can’t take this life no more. I’ve seen people in my life go that way, and sometimes I’ve even secretly thought it myself. I think every American comes to that bridge at some point in their lives because how could you help it in the face of the sheer madness of things perpetrated on a daily basis? But I strive to see it otherwise. Call me a dreamer. Maybe, but to me that bridge could be my light, my lonely lighthouse, towering over Gotham, sending a bat signal so bright that you might see it round the bend of the world.

  Laura, where have you gone? When will you come flying back to me? Your face peers into my dreams. How does it do that? Maybe because you are the one person I can speak deeply and freely with. I feel totally free when I write to you. Listening to music and watching the hand of time pass over the city. I like to listen to these jazz shows on WKCR when I write just to absorb some of that artistry. It’s something in those brothers that moves me. I hear them playing like the only thing that matters is beauty. Even with all we going through. I hear them say, hold on now. Listen. How beautiful we are.

  The other day I went downtown, found myself on Sixth Avenue. And truth be told, I had never thought of it before but we call it: Avenue of the Americas. The Americas. We should always use the plural, I think. What a beautiful ring it has to it. A life in the Americas. On every street corner and every subway car in New York City, the Americas. One island in the human archipelago. Headstrong and unstoppable, like the Staten Island Ferry, always chugging headlong into the looming shadows of the white buildings. Some folk stare up from the deck holding a paper cup full of coffee wondering if they’ll ever catch a break. Me, I always preferred to stay apart from the crowd, looking back at the way we came over. You see, people always thought of me as just a body, a man they could use. But I got a mind, and my own philosophy. And being in the world a good number of years now, I have come to believe that it’s in the nature of the human spirit to search. For a long time, I myself was on a search to understand where I came from and why, and what I ought to do with myself. And when I met you in Paris, I thought that maybe you were part of the answer. I guess I always thought the answer would be something new. But it’s not. I understand why you left. I know you’re searching for something too. Just remember that it might not be a new thing, but the old one to come back to that drives you onward again. I guess I’ve gotten carried away. It keeps happening with me now, when I sit down to write you. It’s as if I need to get the whole world off my chest, and you, Laura, you are the only intelligent person left on Earth.

  I’ve got to get down to the playground. Late afternoon, low eighties. Perfect weather. The Knicks are playing tonight I keep fixin’ to give up on them, but I’m trying to give faith and patience a chance. I got to admit, I still wish it was me balling in the Garden under the big lights, taking it up the floor. Hitting them with a sweet move, the God Shammgod reverse finish at the hoop, taking it back to the old school, when we played the game the right way. But I know it’s too late for all that. What I really want you to know is that I still have the passion. The years may be creeping up on me, but I got no plans to get old. There’s just too much still to do with the neighborhood, with this city I love, with this mad country I got to live in. I feel a little tired. I guess I’ll sign off here as I always do with a wish: to see you again. When you next consider flying across the waters, think of coming here, think of coming back to me

  Nate Archimbald

  * * *

  Laura met him at exactly nine o’clock on the street outside El Vasco. Jonah suggested they go for a walk, a proposition she accepted without comment. But their mutual pained attentiveness only prolonged the unbearable and she stopped him short at one of the wide corners where they had been waiting for the light.

  “Why don’t you get to whatever it is you want from me? I’m not in the mood for romance today.”

  “Well, I have to give you something that won’t make sense at first, but I know that it was meant to be this way, maybe not the way I’ve gone about it, but I know that you need to read this, and when you do I hope you’ll do the right thing and leave Salvador. Not just Salvador but Montevideo.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Laura, suddenly stiff.

  “Trust me, promise me, no matter what—that you will at least get away from Salvador.”

  Before she could react, he pulled out Nathaniel’s letter.

  “This is from Nathaniel. Nathan
iel Archimbald. I met him in New York, and he gave me this letter because I think he knew somehow that I would meet you. It’s crazy, I know, but here we are. You should have this.”

  Laura didn’t move. She seemed paralyzed. They were silent for a time, and then she spoke.

  “You need to leave.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now. Please leave.”

  He could see anger and confusion cloud her face. He thought to kiss her on the cheek, but she motioned him away, so he murmured an apology and left her there clutching Nathaniel’s letter in her hand.

  All the way to the ferry terminal in Colonia, Jonah could feel his face burning. When he got on board and took to the rail to look back at the receding shore, he finally felt a terrible weight begin to lift. He was running on his own now. But the new lightness in his chest wasn’t better. It was worse. He told himself that he was seasick.

  22