Maggie opens her mouth and then closes it again, stares blankly through the windshield. A goddamn hobo.
I’m a good mother, Maggie says. I’ve always tried to be a good mother.
Of course you are, baby. Everyone knows that. I’m just saying you’ve got to watch the other stuff.
The truck’s wipers wheeze back and forth and the headlights shudder and the truck bounces and rattles along, the tow chain banging and the swing arm groaning from the rear. Joshua fiddles with the radio but all that comes is static and eventually he switches it off, lights another cigarette, and shares it with Mother. Duncan stares at the headlights floating misshapen in the black like two oyster shells. He can barely make out the streets through the rain. A mile passes and then two, and although Mother is silent, he can feel the tension of her, or perhaps it is anxiety or fear, building, and he tries to gauge her expression but her face is lost in the shadows of the cab.
Chapter 60
Est evacuatio timoris propter confirniationem liberi arbitrii, qua deinceps scit se peccare non posse. Fear is cast out because of the strengthening of the will by which the soul knows it can no longer sin.
—ST. BONAVENTURE, ON FEAR IN PURGATORY
March 1985
Men’s faces greasy with condensation shimmer in the pitch-black of the tunnel. Beneath his hard hat Joshua’s hair is slick and wet. Sweat trickles down the men’s backs, in the folds between clothes and their rain gear. Mold grows in the creases of their skin, in the warmth of their armpits, between fingers and toes, in their crotches, in the tender places about their ears, and their skin begins to rot. But Joshua has experienced this before many thousands of miles away. And this is not the only thing that reminds him of other places.
From cross-sections and secondary tunnels—ventilation shafts and sluice breaks—men appear suddenly, faces peering out of the dripping darkness, and he cannot tell who they are until they mutter their name: Javier, Sully, John Chang, P.J. Rollins, Billy Gillespie. And the hollow, eternal sound of water droplets falling and reverberating through the tunnel as if they are at the bottom of some abyssal well.
Eyes glisten from pale and gaunt washed-out faces like hard gems in the gloom, like the backs of darkling beetles. And some eyes bleed from their whites, as nitrogen-starved corpuscles explode. Or stepping from pillars of steam: black, shifting figures like the soldiers that move through the misty jungles of his dreams, moving seemingly without end, much like the workers of this tunnel—and always they are following him, always searching for a way to move up, up into the light.
And always the deep, falling, cavernous sound of raindrops, dropping from the walls into holes and cracks and pools about them and echoing like minor concussions enlarging and then diminishing, settling back into the earth and creating the suggestion of vastness, of a free-falling dark without end. And in this dark, faintly, Joshua hears Jamie Minkivitz crying and his brother telling him to stop, pleading with him for the love of God to just shut the fuck up.
Chapter 61
Every night from the Vulcanite radio the same message repeats itself like a looped recorded broadcast from some indeterminable source: the moment of the lunar landing and then the tragic hours before the Eagle’s scheduled return to orbit with the command module and before its ill-fated abort. But tonight is different. Duncan turns the radio’s knob past Radio Luxembourg to a point on the dial where the needle goes no farther, a channel of static from which, when he listens in the dark, a faint sound begins to emerge, at times a ghostly jumble of voices and at others a crisp enunciation punctuating the charged ether. He hears the voice of Michael Collins, ghostly and insubstantial yet filled with urgency:
Collins to Eagle. Over.
Collins to Eagle. Over.
Buzz. Neil. Come back, over.
Collins to Eagle. Over.
Houston, are you picking this up on the LVL? I think there’s a problem with telemetry between the CM and the LM, over. I can’t tell what’s happening down there. I’m changing frequency to NasCom, over.
Now operating on NasCom. Houston? Eagle? Can you hear me?
CM to Houston, do you copy?
Passing into lunar shadow in forty seconds, and counting.
CM to Houston. Hope to return to radio transmission in two hours, over. Houston, do you copy?
Forty seconds.
Be great if you guys could get the RCT up and running by the time I’ve made sequential orbit. It’s getting pretty lonely up here without any human voices for company. Over.
Twenty seconds.
I’ll look for Neil and Buzz on my next pass. Buzz brought his baseball bat. Wanted to see how far in he could hit a baseball in space. [laughs]
Ten seconds.
I think … [garbled].
Out of the dark … [garbled]. Over.
Collins to control. If you have a moment, say a prayer for all of us, would you? We need everything we can get up here.
The Hyginus Rille is in sight. Beginning transmission blackout. If you make contact with Neil and Buzz, tell them I was asking for them. Am eager for rendezvous and excited for their return. What a job they’ve done! See you on the … [garbled].
And then it ends and there is only a vacant electrical hum and soft bursts of static as power surges down the line. Duncan reaches out and turns off the radio and the room is dark once more, but when he lies back in bed, pulls the sheets and blanket to his chin and stares at the ceiling, the deep night of space swirls above him and there are no stars and for the astronauts and his father no promise of dawn and only the never-ever of returning home again.
Chapter 62
April 1985
Jamie Minkivitz and the angel climb higher and higher, the moon rises vast and colossal before them, and they are held momentarily in its lambent light, with the darkness of space stretching all about them, and the angel lifts his face and smiles and his eyes are the color of basalt.
Jamie stares into that face, which appears so beatific and strangely illuminescent and charged with the best and most human of qualities—benevolence, empathy, kindness—that he is entranced and captivated by it, held in its divine light as if he were glimpsing some small part of the face of God, and then the face is suddenly transformed.
Now the thing that looks down upon him, even as it pulls him ever skyward, higher and higher so that the wind is ripping the air from his lungs and he can feel the cold knotting his muscles, a cold paralysis seeping down through him like ink, seems absent of anything human. It stares at him and nothing is reflected in its blank eyes, and then it lets loose its hold and he wonders how he could have mistaken what he’d seen. And even in that moment before it lets go of him and he falls into the darkness, Jamie Minkivitz stares at the fine avian bones of its knuckles and wrists shining white as it squeezes him tighter and tighter so that for one fleeting moment he thinks that his fear is misplaced and that something wondrous is about to happen.
He is six miles up and alone, falling at 120 miles per hour, and in three minutes he will strike the surface of the bay. From pain, cold, and lack of oxygen he is buffeted into unconsciousness. He falls incredibly fast for the first fifteen seconds or so then the air thickens about him—atmospheric drag resisting gravity’s acceleration—and his plummet begins to slow. With every foot, he slows even more. He wakes, sputtering into consciousness, at about twenty thousand feet, and vomits. This is the final part of his descent, which will last about two minutes.
He knows that he is going to die but does not feel peace in this, no strange comfort calms him, rather he feels rage and incredible fear, and the longer he must wait to die and see the bay emerging fully before him, the more this fear increases, and he begins to wail and cry. Tears force their way from his eyes and freeze on his cheeks. Snowflakes swirl in brief, random orbits down from the sky and he raises his face to them as he falls, feels them melting slowly on his skin. The air is sharp and crystalline and the moon so bright that he is momentarily blinded.
For a m
oment it feels as if he has slowed again, and things come much clearly into focus; everything appears incredibly sharp and distinct, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. Below him now the lights of San Francisco, in dazzling, wind-blurred heliographic quadrants, the flashing red warning beacons atop the Golden Gate Bridge, to the cars, minute streamers of white and amber lights, and the water, a serrated silver and gray, which when he strikes will be as hard as concrete.
There is so little time, he knows, and he wants to hold on to something, something that he can hold to his heart, some happy memory, of his life, of his family, of his loved ones, but all he can think of is the fear that very soon he will be dead and he is powerless to prevent it.
The water looks like fractured glass, hard and sharp and unforgiving. Once he strikes it, whatever is left of him will be swallowed up and carried out to sea on the wake of the barges humping slowly through the sound. But there will probably be very little of him left. Small whitecaps stir the tops of waves as freighters and tugs pass beneath the bridge’s massive pylons and cables.
He stopped struggling long ago and gave himself over to the talonlike hands that had carried him ever upward, and when they were rising through the clouds and he was looking into its wind-sheared face, he knew that it was hopeless to argue, or plead, or fight any longer. Now he opens his mouth to say something, a prayer perhaps, or to call out to his mother or father or brother—perhaps it is a name—and his lungs fill up with rich, briny air so cold and clear it is as if he is drinking it, gulping it down, and then he strikes the water and explodes.
San Francisco Chronicle
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1985
SAN FRANCISCO—COAST GUARD ID
BODY FOUND IN SF BAY
At about 7:30 a.m., the U.S. Coast Guard recovered the body of James Minkivitz, a worker on the San Padre underwater tunnel project, off Brooks Island. An autopsy conducted Monday found that Minkivitz died from multiple blunt-force injuries, a county deputy coroner said, most likely, from a high fall onto the rocks. Speculation as to where Minkivitz’s fall occurred remains but there is no suspicion of foul play and the cause of death has been pronounced accidental.
Brooks Island Regional Preserve, a 373-acre island off the Richmond inner harbor, is a nesting ground for terns, herons, and egrets. It is also the site of an ancient Indian burial ground, with shell mounds as old as 2,500 years, and lies approximately six miles north of the San Padre underwater tunnel project currently underway and scheduled to be completed in four years.
Chapter 63
At the Windsor Tap, Duncan and Joshua play Texas hold ’em, with Clay placing the blind, slapping down another card at their request as he passes back and forth behind the bar. Because they must wait for Clay, it is a slow-moving game and Joshua seems distracted and keeps glancing at the crumpled pages of the Chronicle spread upon the bar. Duncan knows he is bored, but, to Duncan, this movement—sluggish and melancholy through the shifting hues, fragments of the day passing outside and filtered through the cubed windows—is immensely pleasing: They are outside time and Duncan can pretend that Joshua’s presence is not merely a temporal and transient thing, but something that will last. When these games end, and Duncan cannot explain why, he is often filled with sadness.
As Clay thrumps back and forth behind the bar, Duncan changes his mind repeatedly, and if he pauses in deliberation when Clay returns, Clay does not wait but continues on behind the bar. Duncan is about to say something and then catches himself and Clay shrugs and is past them, and from somewhere in Joshua’s throat comes a raspy, almost undetectable moan. He takes a swig of his beer and glances down the bar toward what’s left of the day simmering and coalescing and then fading in the glass. Duncan looks down at his cards.
Jamie, Minkie’s brother, Joshua calls to Clay, but Clay has his back to him and doesn’t appear to be listening and Joshua continues anyway. They think he committed suicide just like his father.
They say he died jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, that his body floated upriver to fucking Brook’s Island—can you fucking believe that? But he didn’t hit no rocks. Minkie told me Jamie’s insides imploded when he hit water. Means he dropped a long way. A long, long way. Much higher than any bridge.
Duncan considers his cards and what lies beneath Clay’s blind. He’s not really thinking about what Joshua is saying. There is the tinkling of glass as Clay empties the dishwasher and places the glasses behind the bar.
I mean that’s motherfucking bullshit, man. Bullshit!
Duncan looks up. Clay gestures with his hand for Joshua to lower his voice.
That’s all right, that’s all right, Joshua says and nods. I know what’s going on. Fucking bullshit, that’s what. He lifts his beer bottle again, and when he’s done, his chin glistens wetly.
Angels, he says and laughs emptily. An angel lifted Jamie up miles above the bay and then let him go. That’s what happened.
Joshua makes his hands into wings, the touching fingertips of each hand like the apex of two muscled foramen, and, pouting his lips, creates a whooshing sound like bellows as he flaps the wings slowly and raises his arms up, up, up, high above his head, and then holds them there for a moment. A wall-eyed drunk at the far end of the bar holds his cigarette before his mouth and watches mesmerized; Duncan holds his breath and glances at Clay, who seems to be doing the same. And then Joshua lets his hand go. One rigid, calloused finger drops in a straight line to the bar and slaps the wood violently: a plummeting Jamie Minkivitz turned to pulp upon the surface of the bay.
That’s enough! Clay hollers and shakes his head when Joshua stares him down.
Duncan looks at Joshua questioningly. As he waits, there is only the sound of the fan revolving above them and sloughing the smoky air, thrumming so loudly in his ears it is as if hands were squeezing his head. Joshua leans close to him, puts his arm about his shoulders.
I used to think they were good, my man, he says hoarsely. I believed in their goodness. Just like God and Jesus and doing what’s right for your country, no questions asked. Don’t you see, my man? They’re no fucking good—they ain’t never been good. It’s all shit. They need us for our pain. They fucking thrive on it. It’s what keeps them here.
Who, Joshua? Duncan asks, alarmed; he can feel the weight of Joshua’s arm tightening across his back. What are you talking about?
When Joshua speaks it is in an urgent whisper: Angels, my man. I’m talking about fucking angels.
Chapter 64
In the tunnel beneath the sea Joshua tries to find some manner of peace, peace like he once knew in the jungles of Vietnam, in those rare moments in-country before and sometimes during a nighttime mission when he listened to the jungle breathing about him, felt it moving beneath his skin, his fingertips, vibrating like a tine through his body as he lay prostrate in the dark or as he lay upon his back, staring up at the jungle canopy and the mist through which a scattering of stars sometimes glimmered.
As he labors, his mind becomes vast and empty and the great centrifuge, which so often spins there, whooshing and thumping like a never-ending press, like the giant cranes with their drop hammers bludgeoning the piles into the bay, is suddenly silent. There is only the grunt of physical exertion: the digging, the drilling, the hammering, the shoveling, the excavation of chalk and marl spoil, the hooking and unhooking of electric tow carts, the clearing of the bore face when the giant TBMs go off track or the cutterheads seize, the realignment of the hydraulic jacks, and the meager interactions with the men who surround him through almost imperceptible nods, glances, and reflexive gestures and movements, an intricate and complex orchestration as one man fills the space of another, changing his role as each new job requires.
This, too, is familiar to him, to the way he worked with the other soldiers in his unit, who although he could rarely see them in the dark, were there with him, waiting and then moving quickly but silently into action, each fulfilling his necessary role. It is the moments before these actions that Joshua
tries to hold on to, those moments of peace and the comforting silence he feels in that peace, a peace he must eventually turn toward the great emptiness that spirals inside him, growing ever larger and larger like an abyss into which he is always on the verge of falling.
Above him, above the jungle top, a meteor flares briefly as it arcs the sky and he thinks suddenly of Jamie Minkivitz—it covers the breadth of the world in seconds, hurtling on its journey across the black of space, and he blinks: This is the trajectory and the space that he feels within himself growing ever larger and expansive so that the longer he remains here, the more lost he becomes. It begins to rain, tapping the fat leaves above his head, pooling in their center and then spilling to the ground. He turns on his stomach and slithers deeper into the undergrowth, burying himself in the pulsations of the warm, heaving darkness.
In the darkness it is always Vietnam with its atrocities again, always the past, his father’s brutality, his mother’s leaving and her death; the way she looked at him once as his father struck her and called out his name and he turned away in fear—the darkness created in the space of her absence, of all the absences that now seems to fill him; a darkness that not even the depth of the tunnel, nor all his digging and labor, nor his love for Maggie and Duncan can affect. And gradually, even with his meds, this small manner of peace is no longer enough. He thinks of Jamie Minkivitz and his brother trying to look after him and keep him safe all the years since their father’s death and knows that no matter how much he would want to, he cannot keep Maggie and Duncan safe in this world.
Gradually Joshua loses his sense of temporality: space, distance, and time come to mean nothing. His sense of the world above changes as well, so that in certain moments, when he has passed through the air locks and is ascending from the tunnel, climbing the stairs of the massive ventilation shafts, it feels as if he will never reach the surface, but merely some destination in between, and he pauses in the semi-darkness, peering up and waiting, his breath thumping loudly, amplified in the concrete chamber. He begins to dream of the sky far above him, high above the city: blue sky and startling white cloud; the slow, wide thump of a gull’s hover, and in the background, almost a mile distant, up at what seems to be the farthest edge of the sky, the white jet stream of an airplane, its fuselage blinking in the sun, and beyond that, such a vast, impossible emptiness. And silence.
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