by John Darnton
Jude stopped writing. He looked at her square in the eye and couldn't tell whether she was joking, but her mouth had a mischievous laugh wrinkle on one side.
Their drinks came. He took a deep sip of scotch and felt it hit him. She ran her fingers through her hair, which made it billow outward and fall gently on her shoulder.
There was a brief, uncomfortable moment of silence, and Jude decided to break it.
"You know, at the library I even read a few of your studies."
"Oh, you did," she said, pleased. "And what did you think?"
He struck a judgmental air. "Not bad."
"That's all? Not bad?"
"Shows promise. I like your style."
"I see," she said, lifting her glass and looking over the rim. "My writing style, I presume."
"Absolutely. Your use of metaphor, the color, the drama, all those linguistic flourishes. I had no idea The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology could be so gripping."
"How about my character development?"
"I think your character is developing just fine."
She ignored that. "Well, modesty compels me to point out that a good editor can do wonders."
"You don't say." He paused. "Personally, I've never met one."
"What—a good editor?"
"In fact, I've never heard those two particular words uttered in the same sentence."
"Ah-ha," she exclaimed. "What have we here—a little professional animosity?"
"Not really animosity. Hatred, maybe."
"I understand. That's always the way with unequal relationships. On the one side, there is the power, and on the other, there is only..."
"... charm."
She smiled.
"There's this joke..." he began, then said, "Christ, I can't believe I'm telling you a dumb joke."
He stopped.
"No, please, go ahead," she pleaded. She sounded as if she meant it.
"Well, you see, an editor and a reporter are crawling across the desert, dying of thirst. Suddenly, they come to an oasis. The reporter rushes ahead, he's drinking the water, swimming in it, having a grand old time. He looks back and what does he see? There's the editor, standing at the edge, pissing into it. 'Hey, what the hell are you doing?' he shouts. The editor draws himself up and replies: 'Improving it.'"
She laughed while he drained his glass.
"Would you like another drink?" she asked. "Maybe in honor of your vanishing twin, you should make it a double."
Chapter 9
It was the clanging of the large metal door that startled Skyler awake—that and a blast of light that came from the front of the shed. It took him only a second to remember where he was, and when he did, the events of the previous twenty-four hours came flooding back, like pieces of a nightmare assembling themselves into a horrific whole. Along with it came the by now familiar hollow in his stomach.
He pulled the tarpaulin over his head and tried to read the noises that reverberated inside the metal shed. Another door clanged, and he knew the hangar was now wide open and he envisioned the plane facing the end of the grass strip runway. He heard footsteps treading upon the ground, approaching the plane and moving away and again approaching. He heard a metallic pounding, then the sound of liquid being poured into a tank and he smelled gasoline fumes. Finally, he made out a dull thunk, followed by a skittering sound—the block under the tire being kicked away, he thought—and he knew he was right a moment later when the thunk came again, and the plane rocked almost imperceptibly. Suddenly, the tail lifted, he heard a stream of curse words surprisingly loud through the thin metal skin of the plane.
"Jesus Christ! Son of a bitch!"
The words came only a few inches away from his ear. He could not recognize the voice. It felt like he was being gently carried. He heard fingers slap against the metal for a better grip, and then a series of grunts. A final heave-ho and the plane's tires cleared the threshold of the shed, and as the craft moved onto the grass and into a slightly declining slope, it gained momentum and rolled by itself—so much so that the fingers grabbed it again, and with more cursing it was brought to a shuddering standstill.
Then Skyler heard the door open and a foot step onto the ladder. He held his breath and froze under the tarpaulin, tensing every muscle. He had to prepare himself—if the cover was lifted and he was discovered, he would jump up and attack whoever was there. Surprise was his only ally. His heart seemed to somersault: Where was the knife? Then he remembered: he'd lost it in killing the dog.
The door snapped shut, and he heard footsteps on the wing and another door open and close. More grunts, more curses, the snap of a seat belt. A long silence, one minute, maybe two—and then the sounds of toggle switches being flipped, a window sliding open, and finally the roar of the engine. The plane was vibrating crazily, and he smelled fumes of burning fuel.
In no time, the plane was bumping awkwardly down the runway and shaking from side to side. And then, just as the engine whined as if it was about to explode and the whole plane seemed about to give up the ghost, magically it lifted off and soared upward. Skyler felt his stomach swoon.
For a long time, he listened to the sound of the engine, echoing off the ground and then sounding suddenly quieter as the plane lifted. They droned on alone in space. Slowly, cautiously, he moved the tarpaulin from his head and, looking up, he saw a metal siding, painted cream color and chipped, revealing a green undercoat; it divided his tiny compartment from the interior of the plane. He blinked his eyes in the light, and looked down at two small leather bags. He was at the bottom of a baggage compartment, separated by the siding from the interior of the plane. He raised his head to peer over the edge into the cabin. Ahead were four empty red seats, lined up on either side of a narrow aisle. Above the seats were tiny knit hammocks, apparently for storing things, and little nearby nozzles pointed downward. In the front were the backs of two black seats; one was empty, one occupied. A red fire extinguisher lay underneath.
He could see the back of the pilot's head, a baseball cap held in place by thick black earphones. Before him was a panel of instruments with fluctuating needles and dials and knobs and blinking yellow numbers. The pilot held a U-shaped stick with both hands, and a similar stick extended above the empty seat, turning in synchronicity as if by a ghostly hand. Above was a long window, through which Skyler could see the sky and huge whitegray clouds billowing upward like frozen smoke.
A wing dipped, and suddenly the view shifted and Skyler saw a vista of deep blues and bright blues extending as far as he could see, with slashes of whitecaps—the ocean, he realized with astonishment, seen from above. Fear seized him, but it was ameliorated by a sense of wonder. Off to one side, he caught a glimpse of a green mass, and it took him more than a second to identify it as land—yes, there were the tops of trees rising and falling like the folds of a blanket, and rocks and marshes ringing the whole. It was an island—maybe even his own little island—and then the knowledge struck him almost with the force of a physical blow, that he had already left it behind, his world, the only place he had known. He was on his way to "the other side," to the land he knew only through the radio and through Kuta's stories, to Babylon, as Baptiste called it when he railed against America's obsession with religion and superstition.
The idea intoxicated his mind for a while and kept him on edge with the lure of danger and possibility, but gradually fatigue ambushed him. He lowered his head and curled up under the tarpaulin in the confined space. Soon, the drone of the engine and the rocking motion of the plane lulled him, and so the passage that was to have been the most momentous in his life was lost to sleep.
Chapter 10
Jude was pleased when she called the next day to say that she liked his sidebar. Like many journalists, he disparaged his profession outwardly—it wasn't cool to be idealistic about anything, especially at the Mirror, where journalists called themselves "hacks"—but inside was a different story. He believed newspapers tried to do good, and once in a
while actually succeeded.
"First of all, you got the facts right, which is a virtue not to be overlooked," she said. "Then there's the matter of your style—I like it. Straightforward, matter-of-fact, no bullshit."
"Well—you like my style and I like your style. We're getting somewhere."
And so they were. Before she could hang up, Jude, summoning up his courage, had blurted out an invitation to dinner. Much to his surprise, after a small hesitation, she had accepted. And it had gone on from there. Now they were strolling along on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach, on one side the waves lapping the long expanse of deserted brown sand, on the other a jumble of knish shops, Tastee-Freez, food emporiums and scores of people, mostly elderly, sunning themselves and gossiping in half a dozen different languages. They had just finished a leisurely meal at the Primorsky, a Russian establishment tucked away in the shadow of the elevated train that was one of Jude's favorites; the moment you walked in, everything said you could be back in Moscow, from the open vodka bottles and sad little beet salads to the bouffant hairdos and color-clashing beaded dresses of the heavyset women. It had not disappointed.
This wasn't a date, exactly, more like a casual Sunday afternoon spent in each other's company. They had met only a week ago. Tizzie had never been to Brighton Beach, and Jude, who knew the neighborhood somewhat from a series the Mirror had done on the Russian Mafia, had offered to show her around.
Tizzie sat on a bench and looked out over the ocean, and Jude sat next to her.
"This puts it all in perspective, doesn't it?" she said, turning her face to the ocean.
"What?"
"Oh, the whole thing. Work, love life, parents, friends, the ozone."
Jude was struck, as he had been several times, by the feeling that she was hard to read.
"Something's bothering you," he ventured.
"No," she said, then," Yes."
"Tell me about it."
"Not much to tell, really. It's my parents. They're old and failing—my father especially. It's difficult when you grow up thinking they'll last forever."
Jude nodded and followed her gaze out to the water. Seagulls circled above, and there was a strong smell of salt in the air.
"That's why I had to leave the other day—when you were interviewing me. I'm trying to arrange medical care. It's hard to do long distance."
"Where are they?"
"Wisconsin. White Fish Bay—that's outside of Milwaukee. Beautiful place, green lawns, white clapboard houses, the works. I loved it growing up there—a daughter of the suburbs. An idyllic American childhood."
"You sound sarcastic."
She laughed. "But this is no fair. You've already interviewed me. You know all about me, but I don't know anything about you."
"There's not much to know."
"I'll be the judge of that," she said firmly, resting her hand on his. Her tone was encouraging.
"Tell me about your name. It's unusual. Where did your parents get it?"
He paused a moment, tried to come up with a joke, but couldn't.
"The strange thing is, I don't know." He paused. "And I can't ask them."
She looked at him questioningly.
"They're dead."
She put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry. How did it happen? How old were you?"
And so he took a deep breath and he told her, and he found as he went along that it was surprisingly easy to talk to her about it. He told it straight out—at first in a flat, neutral voice that was self-consciously drained of all affect, lest he be accused of self-pity but then, gradually with color and feeling. He recounted the story of his life, just the way it had happened and the way he had felt at the time. He told her about his idiosyncratic early childhood, his first years in Arizona, where his parents—and this he knew from the vaguest of memories—had belonged to some kind of cult in the desert mountains. It was the 1960s, he said, and people did that sort of thing then.
Tizzie nodded.
He told her how his mother and father had met there. "I was told—although I don't know who told me, and maybe I just imagined it, but I think it's true—that they got married at the direction of the cult leader. He was one of those guys who wanted to build a perfect society away from the world and then ended up running it like a demented dictator, I guess. Anyhow, I came along. Then my mother died, of natural causes, I don't really know what it was."
"How old were you?"
"I must have been about five or so. I can't remember her. I can't even picture her face, and I didn't have a photograph or anything to help me."
Jude looked at her and then out to the ocean. It was easier to talk that way.
"The strange thing is, I used to try to conjure her up, with all my might. I used to lie there and try to think as hard as I could about what she looked like. And when I did this—I haven't done it in years—I couldn't come up with an image, nothing visual. But sometimes I came up with a fragrance. Not a fragrance, really, more of a smell. And I know this sounds weird, but it wasn't a good smell. It was strong, pungent. It was almost antiseptic."
At that, he felt Tizzie's hand touching the inside of his elbow, and he continued.
"Anyway, my father drifted away from the cult. I don't really know what happened, but he was probably devastated by the loss of her—at least, that's what I've always believed. It stands to reason, if he loved her at all. And I guess that happens, even with arranged marriages. We moved to Phoenix. And then he died, too, in a car crash. It was some kind of horrible accident on a crossroads at night. The driver of the other car was drunk."
"And you were how old?" Tizzie sounded deeply moved.
"Six, or maybe seven. I'm not really sure."
"Then what happened?"
"I was taken in by neighbors, people who lived down the block. The Armstrongs. She was some kind of lawyer, and he—I don't know what he did, I think he sold insurance. I hated them. I know it's not fair, they were probably good people—I mean, who else would take in a little kid like that? But still, I hated it in their house. They slept in separate rooms, not just in separate beds. I remember these long dinners with one of them at one end of the table, and the other at the other, and me in the middle, these long silences where all you would hear was his false teeth clicking as he chewed his food. It was an unhappy house—you pick up all kinds of things as a child. I never heard them argue outright, but I knew that they were always at each other, little things. And so when they split up, or I heard they were splitting up, I was actually relieved, I think. I went to a foster home then."
Jude looked at her and anticipated her question. "I was fifteen. Then I won a scholarship to a prep school back East, Phillips Academy, Andover. In Massachusetts. I don't know how I got it. But anyway, I went there, and that place kind of saved me, I guess. I can't say I liked it a lot, though I didn't mind it too much at first. A lot of rich kids, well educated, sons and daughters of Republicans, that kind of thing. Vacations, I'd stay at the school and eat in the cafeteria with the help. Or I'd be invited to some kid's home and I'd sit there around the Thanksgiving table, trying to remember my manners and turning red with embarrassment when the parents would ask these soppy questions about my past. I can't say I fit in, but I got a helluva education."
Jude felt his recital winding down. It hadn't been painful—quite the opposite: it almost felt good to talk about it.
Tizzie wasn't quite ready to stop. "So your early life in Arizona—you really don't remember anything about it?"
"No, not really. Just little things here and there. Stupid little meaningless things."
"Like what?"
"The heat when we'd go down to the desert. We were up in the mountains, so the days were bearable, but down below, it was miserably hot and the nights were freezing cold. There were some kind of mines there."
"Mines?"
"Yeah, tunnels and shafts, I remember playing in them—exploring them, hiding in the dark, dropping rocks down hundreds of feet. I used to play a lot with this
girl."
"Who was she?"
"A tomboy. That's what I nicknamed her—Tommy. Her parents were in the cult, too. We spent a lot of time together." He stopped.
"What is it?"
"It's funny, but I was just remembering. When my mother died, I didn't cry. When my father died, I didn't cry. But when we left there, when my father took me away, I cried my eyes out. It was all because of this girl. She raced along the side of the road as we drove away, and both of us were bawling our heads off. I just looked and looked out the back window as she got smaller and smaller in the distance. We went to some kind of motel. I remember crying for nights afterward. I thought my life had come to an end."
Jude looked at Tizzie, who sighed and squeezed his arm.
Then they stood up and walked back down the boardwalk toward the elevated train rattling in the distance.
Chapter 11
The Valdosta Baptist Church was a low-slung wooden structure whose sole adornment was a square, chimney-shaped belfry, but no bell. The window panes were covered with decals of garish reds, blues and greens, separated by black squiggly lines, meant to evoke the stained-glass grandeur of the medieval cathedrals of Europe.
In the basement, sweltering despite an air-conditioning unit that groaned and dripped a steady stream of water on the garbage cans outside, Skyler lay upon a cot. It was uncomfortable, made of canvas tightly stretched upon crisscrossing wooden legs, which rendered it easy to dismantle with all the other cots when the screaming children came in for morning day care and the homeless were given a quick bowl of cereal and put back out on the streets.
He was depressed. He had every reason to be depressed. He had been there for—how long?—days and days, it seemed, more than a week surely. Lost, hungry, desperate, he had wandered the streets of the city in a crash course to come to grips with the insane new world he had dropped in upon so unthinkingly. He felt like a voyager from another planet. The frenzy, the noise, the filth—it all crowded around him and pressed in upon him in an overload. Never mind understanding it, just try to survive it. The cars careering around corners, the crowded sidewalks, the menace lurking in every shadow. It was like the worst of the TV programs shown back on the island.