The Seven Sequels bundle

by Orca Various

  “He thinks he knows everything there is to know. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  And even if I don’t, apparently, because she turns and runs up the walkway and into the house.

  FIVE

  I trudge up the street. It’s late, and I have nowhere to stay. I’m not even entirely sure where I am. I got a taxi to drop me here from the airport, but I don’t see any cabs around now. I don’t see any cars at all.

  I’m thinking about the old man. He knew Mirella—assuming it’s the same Mirella. Mirella from South America, he said, via California. She stayed there for a while maybe fifty years ago, judging by my rough estimate of Gerry’s age. I’d been thinking of her all this time as a young girl from Buenos Aires, but I realize now that if she’s still alive, she’s in her mid-seventies. She’s my grandma’s age. But it wasn’t the same for her here as it was back home. Back home, she had roots. She had friends and neighbors, people who knew her and who she confided in. But here? She came here from California alone, according to Curtis. Where was her husband when she made the trip to Detroit? Where was Heinrich Franken?

  I have to go back, I realize. I have to talk to the old man again. Maybe he doesn’t know anything, but maybe he can point me in a direction. Back in the sixties, Detroit was booming. The car plants were working overtime. Auto-parts plants too. The jobs were well paying. Maybe Mirella ended up in one of them. If she did, maybe someone has a record of her.

  If she’s still alive.

  I tromp up the street, tired, hungry and, all of a sudden, very cold.

  What a place! I’ve never been in a city that looks so much like the countryside. This is supposed to be Motor City, but it looks more like Farmville. This is the place where Ford and General Motors and Chrysler built cars for decades—in Ford’s case, for almost a century. But where I am, you’d never know it.

  I keep walking.

  My mind flashes back to the ocean and the sun and all the pretty senoritas in their little bikinis on the beach back in Uruguay. I think about one in particular, a raven-haired beauty the same age as me—seventeen—with big brown eyes that sparkled with delight when I hit a clown’s nose straight on, ten times in a row, at a carnival booth down by the ocean. I think about the kiss she gave me when I presented her kid brother with an armful of prizes, all his choice, while people clapped and the carny at the booth scowled, convinced I had cheated somehow. But really, how can you cheat at throwing a softball? You either have the arm—and the eye—or you don’t. I have them both.

  I walk.

  I think about my grandma—my mom’s mom—in her comfy downtown condo in midtown Toronto. I was supposed to meet her there after the Major shipped out. The plan: New Year’s Eve dinner at one of the swankiest restaurants in town, followed by a celebration complete with dancing. Grandma loves to make me dance with her. She says she loves the look of panic and embarrassment on my face as I try to keep up with her. Geez!

  I walk.

  I think about the stuff Adam emailed me—the passport photo, the newspaper clipping, the indecipherable notes, the hand-drawn map—and how crazy it all is, and I wonder why I didn’t tell him, “Sorry, compadre, no can do.” I mean, six months ago, I had no idea who Adam was. But here’s the thing. After those crazy missions David McLean sent us on, Adam was the one cousin who decided to keep in touch, and pretty soon, despite my best intentions, I got to like him. He’s okay. All of my cousins on my mom’s side of the family turned out to be okay. Who knew?

  I walk.

  I think about my grandfather. Not Grand-père, the Major’s dad, but David McLean, the guy who sent me to Iceland after he died. I think about freezing my butt off there too. I almost died when I was dumped on a glacier and a snowstorm struck. I look around me now. Is this just a coincidence, or is it some kind of cosmic plot? Because here I am in the ice and snow again.

  I walk.

  Then I stop.

  There’s a knot of guys up ahead, huddled around a fire in what looks like an old garbage can or oil drum. Beyond them, I see streetlights. I even see some neon, a sure sign that I’m about to exit urban country neighborhood and enter urban commercial district.

  One of the guys is facing in my direction. He nudges the guy next to him. One by one, all six of them turn to look at me. They’re all African-American—at least, I assume they are. This comes as no surprise. Another thing I know about Detroit—it’s 85 percent black. I’m not prejudiced or anything. They could be six white guys huddled around a fire in an oil drum, and I’d still be cautious. It’s common sense, right? Guys who cozy up to oil drums for warmth on frigid December nights tend to be either fiscally challenged (otherwise they’d be somewhere indoors) or up to no good. Plus there’s a bunch of them and just one of me. And did I mention how dark it is with no working streetlamps?

  I think about wheeling around and cutting across to the next block to avoid trouble. But two of the guys have already taken a step away from the fire and toward me. And anyway, if I detour off this street, I won’t be any better off. I’ll still be in the dark, and if they decide to follow me, it’ll still be six against one.

  I pull myself up tall, walk straight toward them. And I say, “Saluts, mes amis. Comment ça va?”

  The two guys in front glance at each other. One gets all squinty-eyed.

  “Tourist.” A grin edges across his face. “Yo, where you from?”

  I suddenly wish I was back on the beach with that dark-eyed senorita in her teeny-tiny bikini.

  “I asked you a question,” he says. The way the others all look at him, I figure he’s the main guy.

  A second guy, his expression more curious than predatory, jerks his chin. “D’où viens-tu?”

  He has an accent that’s nothing like mine. It’s also nothing like my grandparents’ or like anyone else’s I ever heard when the Major was based in Quebec. It’s definitely nothing like the acccent of any French teacher I ever had outside of Quebec, most of whom were from France and insisted on Académie de la langue françaisetype French. No, this guy is from somewhere else.

  “Côte d’Ivoire, n’est-ce pas?” I say.

  The guy smiles. Then he laughs. “Oui, oui.” He nods enthusiastically. “Côte d’Ivoire. Tu l’a visité?”

  “Malheureusement non.” I’ve never visited Ivory Coast. But, thank God, I’ve been with the Major on countless occasions when he’s heard some cab driver or gas jockey or convenience-store clerk utter a few words and has homed right in on his accent like one of those heat-seeking missiles. People are always tickled when he recognizes a Kurdish or Haitian or Belarus accent when, they figure, most people have no idea where to locate those places on a map. It gives the Major instant rapport.

  “Et que fais-tu ici?” Ivory Coast guy asks. What are you doing here?

  “You’re in America,” Squinty-Eyes says. “Speak American, Jack.”

  “It’s Jacques, not Jack.” Ivory Coast rolls his eyes and looks at me as if he expects me to understand how annoying it is when people mangle his name. I do.

  “I’m looking for someplace to stay.” I direct this not to all six guys, but only to Jacques. “You know somewhere cheap? A youth hostel maybe?” I hope by asking this last question, they’ll get the idea that I’m broke, even though I’m not.

  Squinty-Eyes immediately loses interest, which is okay by me.

  “What do we look like?” he says. “The Tourist Information Center?” He nudges the guy next to him, and they brush by me, every one of them except Jacques jostling me as they pass.

  Whatever. I shrug deeper into my jacket and keep walking. I’m thinking about the house Mirella sent her postcard from and why I’m here and what Nazis have to do with it and what I’m supposed to do and whether I even want to do it. I cross street after street, scanning for someplace, any place, I can get a room or a bed or just a patch of warmth. Then—don’t you know it—someone grabs me from behind.

  My heart slams in my chest. But, thanks to the Major, my muscles remember all on t
heir own what they’re supposed to do. I tell myself that if he’s armed (in this town, the probability is up around 90-plus percent), I’m screwed. But if he isn’t, well then he’s in for some major hurt before he gets what he wants from me—if he gets it.

  I spin around. It’s Jacques. He laughs. It’s a deep belly laugh.

  “I did not mean to frighten you,” he says, this time in Côte-d’Ivoire accented English. “I wanted to tell you—you can stay at my place.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nods and switches back to French. “I don’t get much chance to speak French. These Americans, they’re all the same. Speak American, as if that’s even a language. Come on. It’s not far.”

  We walk a couple more blocks and then stop in front of a broken-down house that stands like the lone tooth in an otherwise toothless mouth. What is it with this town?

  “This is your place?” I ask. No offense to him—gift horse, mouth, etc.—but what a dump.

  “I live here. But is it my place?” He shrugs. “The jobs disappeared. The bosses, they send the work to places where they can pay a few dollars a day. The people who lived here, they don’t live here anymore. It’s not much. But it has a roof and walls.”

  He leads me up a groaning porch, shoulders the front door to unstick it and strides through the front hall toward the back of the house. If it wasn’t for that clear sky, those stars and that slice of moon, I’d be tripping and stumbling and maybe falling flat on my face. He stops in front of another door and digs something out of his pocket. A key. He inserts it into a padlock, opens the door, and suddenly there’s light. I blink as I take in the surroundings.

  The paint, where I can see it, is peeling off the walls. The floor—again, where I can see it—is covered with cracked linoleum. But mostly I can’t see it any more than I can see the walls, which are covered with bright wall hangings and rugs, crazy-patterned in primary colors. A half dozen equally colorful throw rugs cover most of the floor. A bare lightbulb hangs at the end of a cord dangling from the ceiling. The one thing I have no problem seeing is my breath. It’s cold in here.

  Jacques turns on a space heater. “We keep just enough heat in the house so the pipes don’t freeze.” He waves me onto a heap of mattresses covered with a thick quilt. “The rest—it’s up to each of us.”

  “Us?”

  “There are other people living here, each with a room.”

  As if on cue, I hear a bass line from up above.

  “That is Hector,” Jacques says. “A musician, when he can get work.” He looks at the ceiling as the bass stops, then starts again, repeating the same few phrases, then stops again. If it bothers Jacques, he doesn’t show it. “Sit. I’ll make food.”

  He opens the window, letting in a blast of cold air, and pulls in a bucket with a lid on it. He dumps the contents into a pot, drops the pot onto a hotplate, and before long the cozy room is filled with a spicy, mouthwatering aroma. My stomach growls. The last food I ate was on the airplane, and that was nearly twenty-four hours ago. I lean back against the mound of pillows on the mattress and listen as Jacques tells me about his home in Côte d’Ivoire and the dreams that brought him to America. I’m on the verge of dozing off when he thrusts a plate and a spoon into my hand. He sits cross-legged on the mattress beside me and we both start to devour a spicy stew made with chickpeas and onions and—

  “What kind of meat is this?” I ask.

  “Goat. It’s goat.”

  Pretty damn good goat, if you ask me.

  I don’t know when I fall asleep. But when I wake up, I’m under the quilt, sun is streaming through the window, Jacques is gone, and there’s a note propped up on the windowsill. I find the bathroom—it’s on the second floor, and it’s pretty raw. Looks like none of the “tenants” share the Army mentality that’s been ingrained in me by the Major. Back home, our bathroom glistens. Honest. I wash up.

  Jacques’s note tells me to lock up and deliver the key to him at work. I shoulder my duffel and head out. I’m surprised to find out that Jacques has a job and yet lives in a place like this. I thought maybe he was on welfare.

  The directions lead me to a restaurant. Actually, it’s more like a greasy spoon—a little place with battered booths along one wall, a few tables up front and a few more in the back, and stools at the counter. Jacques, it turns out, is the cook. He flashes a toothy grin at me and sends through a couple of fried eggs, a couple of slices of what’s called Canadian bacon down here, a mountain of fried potatoes, and some toast. The waitress, a youngish woman with deep circles under her eyes but an easy smile, pours me some coffee and slides a bowl of individual creamers in front of me.

  “You cook African food here?” I ask Jacques in French.

  “I speak American here. To be polite to the customers. And to Elsie, who speaks American.” He nods at the waitress.

  “And Spanish. And Russian. And a few other languages.” Elsie picks up some orders.

  “But not the most civilized language in the world,” Jacques says.

  “For your information, my Latin is excellent,” Elsie retorts.

  Jacques laughs. “Elsie, this is Rennie.”

  “Hey, Rennie.” She bustles by me to a booth where three black guys are sitting. They’re older men, and they’re dressed for the cold, like they work construction or maybe they used to. It’s hard to tell in this town. Could be they work demolition.

  “What’s she doing waitressing here if she speaks so many languages?” I ask.

  “For your information, I have a PhD,” Elsie replies, scooting past me to grab a coffeepot and some mugs. “In linguistics. But you gotta make a living somehow, right, Jacques?”

  I glance at Jacques.

  “Right,” Elsie says. “He didn’t tell you. Jacques has an engineering degree. But he can’t get a job here. No American experience.”

  Jacques just shrugs.

  I look around the place. It’s plain but clean, and the food smells great.

  “Do a lot of people live around here?” I ask. “Because there seem to be a lot of houses missing.”

  “It’s because of the car factories,” Jacques says. “They laid off people; then they shut down.”

  “It wasn’t just the car plants,” Elsie chimes in. “All the auto-parts places closed too.”

  “People walked away from their houses,” Jacques says. “They couldn’t pay the mortgage anymore. They couldn’t sell their places either. Everyone who could find something somewhere else moved. The people who stayed—if they had work, it didn’t pay nearly as much as their old jobs, so they either abandoned their homes or let them fall into disrepair.”

  “It’s pretty depressing,” I say. “No offense.”

  “It’s getting a little better,” someone says. It’s one of the construction workers. “People are trying.”

  “Some people are trying,” one of his buddies says.

  “Those urban farms, they’re a good idea,” the first guy says.

  “Urban farms?” What’s he talking about?

  “Where there are a lot of empty lots. Some people are planting crops. We have great produce around here in the summer. Fresh. Local.”

  “We also have all those stray dogs,” says the second guy. “Fifty thousand of them.”

  I can’t help it—I whistle. “That’s a lot of strays.”

  “You can say that again. Especially when the animal shelters have room for only fifteen thousand at the most.”

  “We also got those white-power jokers,” says the third maybe-construction worker, who up until now has been silent.

  “Idiots, the whole lot of them,” another guy says.

  “Dangerous idiots. They killed those two college kids.”

  “Some white-power guys killed someone?” This is some city. “Seriously? You mean, like, KKK guys?”

  “Something like that,” the third guy, the quiet one, says. He looks me up and down, and suddenly I feel very white. “They call themselves the Black Legion. Attacked a coupl
e of college kids. Beat one of them to death. Shot the other one.”

  “Man, those guys are crazy, complètement fou,” Jacques says.

  “They’re cowards.” Elsie, over beside the construction workers’ booth now, slams down a re-up of toast as if to emphasize the point. “You know where they hold their rallies? In the suburbs, where most people are white.”

  “I’d like to see them hold one of those rallies in my neighborhood.” He holds up his mug for more coffee. “I’d put my boot right up a skinny white ass or two.”

  I glance at the boots in question. They’re steel-toed.

  “What happened to the guys who killed those kids? Are they in prison?”

  One of the construction workers snorts. “They ain’t even been arrested.”

  “Why not? Don’t the cops know who they are?”

  “They know. They know exactly who they are. But they say they have no proof. Haven’t even made an arrest, and it’s been almost a year now.”

  “I see one of those kids around here all the time,” another guy says. “Struttin’. He’s always struttin’, like he’s cock of the walk. He’s got away with murder, and he knows it. Thinks it makes him someone special. A real tough guy.”

  “An ignorant so-called tough guy. Kid’s a school dropout. So are his buddies. Unemployed too. Living off the state. We’re paying that kid’s way. That’s the thing that galls me.”

  The more I hear about this town, the more I want to get my business done and go home.

  I eat up. When I try to pay, Jacques waves away my money. I hand him his key.

  “Keep it,” he said. “You are welcome in my home.”

  “You’ve done too much already.” But I have one more favor to ask. “Can I leave my bag here—until I find a place?”

  “No problem.”

  I hand it over.

  Then I head back to the house where the old man lives.

  SIX

  A few words about Detroit, in case you don’t know the place. Back when Mirella wrote her letter, the Big Three car makers ruled the world, and the guys who did the grunt work on the assembly line made out like kings (relatively—it’s always relative), thanks to their union, which they’d had to fight long and hard to get. This is according to one of the brochures I picked up at the Welcome to Detroit kiosk at the airport.