I’ve seen the gray stuff in at least a hundred movies.
Then Charlie Lee shouts in the woods. His voice, high-pitched and giddy, makes my skin crawl and a flock of birds take flight from the trees overhead.
“God is great!” Charlie Lee’s yells. “God is great!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
heroism
For all anybody knows, life really might be a video game.
Once somebody’s life meter completely depletes, who can say for sure that’s the end? After all, few people, if any, have gone into the light and made the U-turn back to reality to explain what’s there. Maybe everything goes black for a second, and when the lights come back on, there you are—back on level three with a few less points and weapons but very much alive, at full energy, and with a chance to go for that same obstacle that killed you once before. And maybe this time you’re equipped with the know-how to get beyond that obstacle—be it the Kevlar mutant in Heckenluber or that zombie with the fireballs in Attack Zombies—and move on to level four, and then higher and higher in the same way until you master the game.
And maybe, using one of those future lives, I would dash for the gob of plastic explosive smeared across the side of the hemp cooker, pluck it off, and throw it into the middle of the lagoon before it explodes, turning the Tamzene and all of us into a pile of cinders.
Instead Kang does it.
A second after the Birmingham Kid barks his warnings from the forest, the Indian appears out of nowhere and in one quick motion peals the explosive off the metal casing, thrusts it over his shoulder like a javelin, and hurls it in a steep arc into the center of the lagoon.
“Dern it!” Charlie Lee shouts from somewhere in the woods. “Mr. Injun, you’re a lucky son of a gun! I would’ve blown you to smithereens if this dern detonator worked the way it was supposed to.”
Esmerelda and Arthur are up. She has her arms wrapped around Arthur and is pressing herself—boobs and all—hard against Arthur’s PA system.
“All right, don’t anybody move, now.” The Birmingham Kid jumps up from behind a line of bushes on the bank next to the side of the boat. In his left hand he has an old revolver—what they call in the movies a Colt .45—which he holds at his waist.
“I’m coming back over there, and we’re going to try this again, y’all.” His voice is tired and worn. He must have been up all night, formulating his plan to atone for his sin in blowing up the Steak Shack, when he’d noticed the bag of shrimp shells.
Carrying his knapsack over his shoulder, Charlie Lee wades into the waste-deep water and climbs aboard the Tamzene, pointing the gun at where we’ve gathered on the deck.
“So, like, where in the Bible does it say anything about waving pistols around at people, Charlie Lee?” Esmerelda growls at him.
Charlie Lee scratches his head with the gun barrel. “The Lord helps those who . . . you’ve got to help yourself for the Lord . . . Shoot, don’t it say something like Be Prepared?”
“That’s the Boy Scouts,” I say.
Charlie Lee shrugs and points the gun at us. “Well, I ain’t never had to shoot nobody yet. But don’t you think I won’t, missy, if y’all try and prevent me from doing the Lord’s work. Come here, Winthorpe.”
Somebody has pushed an ice cube up my spine. “Me?”
“Right,” Charlie Lee says. He lifts the backpack from his shoulder and places it on the deck. “I need you to set the explosive for me. I can’t do that and hold the gun at the same time. The rest of y’all stand right there.”
Hold on to hope, baby . . . no . . . When the lightning . . . the songs are whirling faster than the mental iPhone can catch them. I switch to movies—Jason Bourne dodging bullets, Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name fashioning a bulletproof vest out of a piece of scrap metal in A Fistful of Dollars.
I kneel and unzip the bag.
“That’s it,” Charlie Lee says. “Grab a big ol’ handful of the gray stuff.”
I reach into the bag and wrap my hands around what feels like dry clay. In Sniper Dude X, the hero takes a bullet to the forehead and he’s still cool enough to make out with the Lizard Girl in the end. I imagine myself heaving the explosive stuff overboard and knocking the pistol out of Charlie Lee’s hand.
“Now slather it on the side of that engine there,” Charlie Lee says.
Esmerelda looks scared. It would have turned her on big time if I’d had the scrotum to make a move. Next to her, Arthur frowns and shakes his head. Kang never takes his eyes off the Birmingham Kid.
“Come on, son,” Charlie Lee says. I look at him over my shoulder and see the gun barrel, and it’s like the Wi-Fi hiccupped and everything’s frozen, and there’s a Buffering status report that keeps showing up.
I press the lump against the side of the hemp cooker.
“Attaboy,” Charlie Lee says. “Now go on over there with the others.”
Still holding his gun on us, Charlie Lee reopens the bag and pulls out long metal pipe cleaners, which he jams into the gray lump. Then he reaches into his pocket and produces a TV remote control.
“All right, y’all,” Charlie Lee says, smiling at us. “Here we go again. Now, y’all are going to stay put right there. I’m going back over to the bank where I was. When I holler God is great, y’all better hustle off this here boat, or . . . like I say . . . God’s will.”
He backs toward the gunwales.
“I don’t believe this,” Esmerelda says. “Charlie Lee, come on, don’t you think this is a little crazy? I mean, we’re not a restaurant—”
“Crazy?” his eyes flash. “Y’all are the crazy ones! Read your Bible! Y’all ate of the forbidden shellfish, and this here is your judgment day!”
As he moves toward the side, Charlie Lee doesn’t notice that Doctor Seabrook has climbed up the retractable stairway from the hold and is now tiptoeing toward him.
Seabrook is still the color of chalk. His mad funny hair juts in wild directions, but his eyes are sharp and clear and trained on the Birmingham Kid. He’s holding a fire extinguisher.
“And by my atonement, y’all are gonna atone too. Sorry about that Doctor fella, but someday you’ll come to understand that was all a part of God’s—unh!”
Seabrook punches the back of Charlie Lee’s head with the fire extinguisher. The Birmingham Kid grunts and falls into the pile of shrimp shells. When the fire extinguisher makes contact, the shellfish bomber flinches, squeezing the trigger on his Colt .45.
What happens then is in slow motion, like one of the fight scenes in The Matrix. The gun snaps, and I hear a whizzing noise, feel the breath of something like a fat dragonfly zipping past, traveling at breakneck speed directly at the person standing next to me—Esmerelda.
But as soon as the gun pops, Arthur dives in front of Esmerelda. The bullet thuds against him, and he crumples in midair and lands on the deck, draped over his PA system.
“Oh, God,” Esmerelda breathes.
Arthur lies there, not moving.
“Oh, God,” Esmerelda whispers. “Arthur?”
Arthur’s pointy shoulder blades make an X through his pit-stained T-shirt.
This one time I saw this video where a woman’s husband lost his head in a car accident, and she was left holding the head. She carried it a full city block because she was catatonic. The person making the video asked her what she was thinking, and she said all shaky, “It wasn’t real.”
This is.
Awful real.
Mad real.
No movie soundtrack violins or cool CGI or somebody screaming No! dramatically—the cackling birds, the flop flop of water hitting the hull, and the body of the kid I killed because I brought him here.
Burton Trotsky, the other Paste Eaters, and I always talk about going down to South Philly to watch a real-time gunfight. Trotsky, of course, claims he’s already seen his share and has even been in a few himself, and that when you’re in one it’s like major John Woo, with pirouettes and slow-mo.
Trotsky is full of
shit, of course. I know it.
Real-time gunfights aren’t like that.
Just when I’m sprouting real tears, Arthur stirs. No blood on his shirt. Instead there are pieces of broken metal and plastic all over him and a big crack where the bullet connected with the bullhorn on his PA system.
“Are you all right?” Seabrook asks. He drops the fire extinguisher and kneels beside Arthur.
Arthur winces and rubs his chest. He gives the Doctor a thumbs-up sign.
I must be crying or something, because Seabrook asks me, “Mr. Brubaker, are you all right?”
So I nod, because I am.
“Kick-ass, dude,” Esmerelda says. She throws her arms around Arthur’s shoulders and leans into him, squashing her boobs against his PA system. She presses her face against his.
“You . . . like . . . saved my life, man,” she says. “I will . . . never . . . forget you as long as I live.” She cocks her head and plants her lips squarely on Arthur’s. They sit like that for a long time, long enough for Arthur to change three shades of red.
When the kiss is finished, Kang picks Arthur up by the shoulders and gives him a bear hug.
I feel smaller than I ever have. I try to apologize, but I’m too embarrassed.
Esmerelda peels her face off of Arthur’s and looks at me. “Hey, stubby,” she says, smiling. “What could you do, man? The guy, like, had a gun. I’m the one who should feel bad. I told Kang to pick the guy up in the first place.”
Seabrook stoops and picks up Charlie Lee’s remote control and pistol. Then he goes to the hemp cooker and removes the plastic explosive. He stares at the gray lump in his hands.
“Kang, this would have destroyed my ship,” he mutters. Frowning, Kang puts Arthur down.
“No hitchhikers, Kang.” Seabrook glares at the Indian. His voice is hoarse, but he’s speaking more clearly than he has in days. “We had no choice with the children, but no more hitchhikers.” He leans over the hemp cooker, inspecting the blobs of melted and re-cooled metal where the Indian welded the broken machine shut after it crashed into the rock wall during the storm. His frown deepens to a scowl.
“Kang was only trying to help the man out,” Esmerelda says. “Somebody was shooting at him.”
“We are not in the business of charity,” Seabrook says. “There are Green Police agents all over these woods. Side adventures will only sink us. Kang knows this.” The wound on his shoulder must have hurt him just then, because he winces and places his hand on it.
“Damn,” Seabrook mumbles. “Kang, I told you we needed to buy reinforced steel and patch this fissure. These welds will never hold. Why is it that you refuse to regard my orders?”
Kang bristles.
Just then, Charlie Lee groans. He rubs the back of his scalp, rolls to his side, and forces himself up onto his elbow. He makes a face like he’s tasting something sour. Then he sputters and spits something into the palm of his hand.
It’s a shrimp shell. When he fell, he must have sucked it into his mouth.
His eyes widen and he howls, then stops when Seabrook stands over him with the pistol.
“Get out of here,” Seabrook growls.
The Birmingham Kid’s face sags. “Mister, you don’t understand! I’m trying to do the Lord’s work here and you’re . . .”
“The Lord,” Seabrook snaps. “The Lord?” Spit flies from his mouth and his eyes go buggy. Sentences fly from his mouth like bullets: “Get out of here now. Do you hear? Nobody is buying what you’re selling. We don’t want it here, do you understand me?” His face goes bright red. He jams the pistol into the Birmingham Kid’s face.
Seabrook is going to shoot him. He’s gone loopy.
Charlie Lee scrambles to his feet, dusts the shrimp shells off his overalls, and walks toward the side of the boat. He turns toward his knapsack to pick it up.
“Leave that,” Seabrook growls.
“But it’s my property, Mister.”
“Leave it,” Seabrook says.
Kang grabs the knapsack away from Charlie Lee, who hangs his head and climbs over the side. He throws us all a hate-filled stare as he disappears.
“All right, Kang. Take her out of here—and slowly. We don’t want to blow the hemp cooker,” Seabrook says.
The engine roars. Charlie Lee shouts from shore: “Y’all ain’t heard the last of the Birmingham Kid! I will atone for my sins! And so will all of you!”
As we pull away, I see him jumping up and down at the edge of the bank, face flushed purple.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
lydia
Seabrook doesn’t speak for a while. He takes us downriver for several hours until it becomes dark, then anchors at the edge of a small island. He grabs the bottle of whiskey Kang was using to clean his wound—it’s still almost full—and goes belowdecks, and we don’t see him for a while.
When he emerges again, it’s late, and Esmerelda, Arthur, and I are all sleeping on the deck. He’s walking funny. He falls against the door to the cabin and stumbles, then trips over my feet and faceplants on the deck.
I get up to help him, but he waves me off. He leans against the hemp cooker.
I tiptoe to him. One hand dangles against his hip. In the other he holds his key chain, the one shaped like a crucifix. Between his knees is the whiskey bottle, which has only a splash left. He is staring downriver with his mouth agape.
“You all right?” I ask him.
He straightens up and looks at me hard. “Of course,” he says. “You should be sleeping, Mr. Brubaker.” Not all of the syllables in Mr. Brubaker make it out, but I know what he means.
“Can’t sleep,” I say.
We sit there listening to the crickets, which sound like one of the space cars from The Jetsons whirring away.
“She’s not mine, you know” he says finally.
“What?”
“The Tamzene. She’s not mine. You probably think I invented her, just like you thought I was a doctor. My wife. She did.”
“Lydia?”
“Yes. How did you know that?” He shook his head. “Did you know she was a scientist?”
“Kang said something.”
Seabrook nodded. “Did he tell you about me?”
“Just that she was a scientist and that she had . . . you know . . .”
“I am—or I was, I mean—a minister. Rev. Doctor Seabrook—the Reverend Doctor they used to call me. First Presbyterian Church in Love Canal, New York.”
“When was this?” I ask.
“It was . . . thirty years ago, Mr. Brubaker.” He narrows his eyes. “Has it been that long?”
“But you’re not anymore,” I say.
“No,” he murmurs. “Not anymore.”
He looks at the inky water rushing past.
“It was a good job. No taxes. Not a big paycheck, but a nice little spread not far from the 99th Street School. Steady. She gave birth to our first child that first year there. We were happy. Even though Lydia didn’t believe . . . well, we didn’t see eye to eye, needless to say. She was a woman of science. Just like I’m a man of science now. Back then I was a big power-of-prayer guy. Pray for one another, that you may be healed. One of those saps—that if you lead a good life and pray hard enough, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, we all loved one another and we respected one another and really—you’ll find this out one day—that’s all that’s important.”
He takes a final pull on the whiskey bottle, tipping the bottom straight up in the air, then moves as if he plans to pitch it over the side. Thinking better of it, drops it clattering on the deck.
I try to imagine him as a dad, with one of those wicked black-and-white collar deals, a wife at his side, and a baby in his arms. It isn’t easy, but then it isn’t easy to picture His Eminence as a dad either.
“But the Tamzene is hers. I just thought you should know. We’ll tell your dad. Okay? It’s her boat. She made it.” He grabs my shoulder so hard I’m sure there’ll be a bruise. It’s the closest thing to a tender gest
ure I’ve ever seen him make. It just hurts, that’s all.
He half smiles and looks back downriver. “She wasn’t one of the first to get sick. By that time, everybody knew what was what. People were dying. They were dumping toxic waste. Occidental Petroleum had been dumping there since the ’40s. Lydia knew all about it. She’d grown up in Love Canal. I was from Indiana. She knew it wasn’t safe.”
He rubs his eyes. He hasn’t shaved in days, and his muttonchops have dribbled fragments of hair across his chin. The skin is still all chalky.
“She wanted to move,” he says. His voice is thick and rasping. “I told her that my flock was there and that we had to stay. Jeffrey was going to start kindergarten soon. The falls were right there—Niagara Falls, you know. One of the most beautiful places on earth. Everything just seemed sort of set. But she knew.” He grimaces. His voice becomes very sharp. “She knew and she stood by me because even though she didn’t believe . . .
“She knew about the cancer before she knew. Before the doctors knew, she knew. I told her she was crazy, that God wouldn’t cut down someone like her. Someone who was out working in her office all day and night trying to come up with better ways of living life on this planet. And then she got sick, and I told her still, God wouldn’t. That God was just testing her, and if she believed, she’d be okay. So she said she believed.”
He looks at me, his eyes wide with fear. “Because of me, she gave up all her work and started coming with me to church, started praying and wearing her crucifix.” He holds up his key chain. “And I knew God wouldn’t take her away because we both had faith and we both prayed so hard, and even as she got sicker and sicker we prayed. In fact, the sicker she got, the harder we prayed, and the more we believed she was going to be okay.” His voice has been getting louder, but a wet choke stifles it.
“Religion makes people do fucked up things, Mr. Brubaker,” he mutters after a moment. “It wasn’t until after she died that I realized she’d been praying for me the whole time. To make me feel better. It was all my fault. She’d wanted to move, and I wanted to stay put.”
We Are All Crew Page 18