by John Darnton
On his first day, after walking away from the airfield and pushing through a hedge, he'd approached a young girl to ask where he was, and she'd turned and fled. Children made fun of his old clothes, dogs barked at him. It began badly and got worse.
That first morning was forever imprinted upon his memory. The plane was still droning on when he awoke with a start; panic rose up as palpable as the bile in the back of his throat. His nap had left him disoriented and frightened, and he felt claustrophobic in the baggage compartment. His arm was sore where the dog had lunged at him. He had an irresistible urge to take his bearings, to scout out the situation, and so, cautiously and slowly, he raised his head to peer into the cabin.
There was the back of the pilot's head, baseball cap in place just as before. But outside through the windows, everything had changed. Gone was the blue expanse of water. Instead, there was only land—and so much of it! It extended in all directions as far as he could see, patches of dark green for trees and long strips of brown soil that looked deep and rich, the way fields back home looked at planting time. There were chocolate brown rivers snaking through the landscape and rounded humps for hills—all of it wreathed in a fog that made parts of it disappear and reappear.
There were long black ribbons—roads—and upon them were cars that moved slower than the plane and turned this way and that like little animals that had minds of their own. And as the plane flew on, they came to a more populated area, roofs and roads, and a bright green field with brown paths that puzzled him until he realized it was a baseball diamond. They were flying lower now: more houses, more roads and cars, and a large round wooden tower with writing on it. What was that for? The plane banked, and Skyler saw something large and dark on the ground that was moving below them, and he was alarmed until it dawned on him that it was the plane's own shadow.
Suddenly, the pilot spoke. Skyler dropped down in terror and didn't move. The pilot spoke again, but in a casual, disengaged way, so that Skyler surmised that it had nothing to do with him. Once more, he dared to look over the partition, and he saw the pilot in profile, with a little tuft of gray hair poking through the forward hole of the backward baseball cap. He recognized him—Bryant, the handyman in the Big House. Knowing who it was made everything seem more real and even more frightening. Bryant was holding a receiver in his hand, and Skyler presumed that he was communicating with someone on the ground.
Not long after that, the plane banked again and came in for a landing, setting down on the runway with a bump. The engine abruptly squealed louder, and at that moment the aircraft began to slow; then it turned sharply to the left, and moved ahead until the engine tapered off and stopped with a sputter. There were more noises close by—clicks and snaps and footsteps coming down the aisle toward Skyler. He realized that Bryant was standing right above him; he could almost feel him looking down upon him. He stopped breathing and held every muscle rigid, the pulse pounding in his temples. Then, suddenly, the tarpaulin moved. Skyler was ready to spring up, and was gathering his strength to do so, when he heard the door swing open. He moved his hand; the suitcase that had been at his side was gone. Bryant was already outside.
The footsteps disappeared, and Skyler waited until he could hear nothing. He got out of the plane and stepped onto the tarmac in the shade of an open hangar under a corrugated metal roof. He looked in all directions: no one in sight. Nearby was a two-story tower topped with large, square windows and a rotating metal object. Beyond that was a brick building with windows that reflected like mirrors, and a parking lot half filled with cars. To Skyler's left was a metal fence, and farther on, a hedge, and through that he could see a road. It was already hot as blazes.
He ran—just ran straight out as fast as he could, and when he came to the fence, he vaulted it, cutting his arm on the uppermost metal spike, and then he struggled through the hedge. Then he ran some more up the road, turned and looked behind him. No one was following him. He slowed to a quick walk and looked around. There were large signs on stilts. One said AQUALAND and showed children with their mouths open plummeting down a slide filled with water. Another was for a gas station. At a crossroads, he came upon a sign with red letters against a yellow background, mounted on rubber wheels, which read: COME JOIN US FOR DINNER. But no one was around. Then he approached the young girl walking down the sidewalk and asked her for help, and she turned and ran away.
For two days, Skyler had wandered the streets, eating out of garbage cans outside restaurants and begging for loose change, which he had never seen before and had to learn to use. His beard grew to a stubble, his stomach ached constantly, and his skin became pasty and he got as thin as a saint. One morning, when he awoke in a park, he saw that the sky was filled with dark, billowing clouds and the wind was whipping up; he knew a storm was coming. The streets emptied out, and just as the rain started to hammer down, a police car came along and picked him up and took him to the homeless shelter in the church basement.
It turned out it was not just a storm, but a hurricane, and it was a terrifying experience. While the wind howled and the rain pounded outside, the men fought inside. There was a lot of drinking and stealing, which scared him. Once, a man who had been talking to himself wounded another man with a knife and was expelled; he left, shouting vile words. At night, the man on the cot next to him, who grunted that his name was "Smokey," taught him to roll his clothes up in a bundle and sleep on them so that they wouldn't be stolen. Skyler began to wonder if Baptiste hadn't been right—maybe the mainland was one great big cesspool.
The religious people who ran the place gave him an extra shirt and a pair of pants and insisted that he attend services. He was amazed to see a statue of the crucifixion on the altar; he kept quiet, his eyes wide with amazement at the reverence with which they read from the Bible. He liked the singing, though.
His bunkmates taught him how to earn a few bucks by bagging groceries, weeding gardens and washing windows, and collecting bottles to refund at the Winn-Dixie market. He saved a pathetic fistful of coins, and lived on the shelter's cereal and sandwiches, and on bread and french fries that he snuck from the cans behind Karla's Fish & Crab.
For the next couple of days, he and Smokey joined a small gang of Mexicans and Salvadorans that picked peaches. The first morning, everyone made fun of him, because he was too terrified to mount the open back of the truck that was to carry them.
"Boy, where you from?" shouted the owner, pushing up the wide brim of his straw hat. "I seen backwoods boys before, but I never seen one like you."
Just as he was about to drive off and leave him, Smokey whispered something to two other men, and they jumped down and hoisted Skyler onto the truck bed, where he rode sitting down, bouncing among the crates and burlap bags. The orchard was miles away. Smokey taught him how to carry a long white ladder on his shoulder, and a young Mexican girl with a stunted thumb taught him to pick the peaches by stretching up with one hand and pinching them off. They were given cards with numbers on them, and when they picked a bushel basket full, they carried it to the foremen, who inspected the peaches and poked a hole in a grimy card with a handheld punch. Skyler was embarrassed that even the small children filled more baskets than he. It was exhausting work that hurt his back; peach fuzz stuck in his skin, so that when he rubbed his arms across his forehead to wipe off the sweat, it felt like hundreds of microscopic splinters.
They were not paid the first day, and so had to return to the orchard the next morning. That day, finally, the foreman looked at their cards and doled out dollar bills grudgingly; they were small denominations but fresh bills that still smelled of ink, and no one objected. Smokey took Skyler's pay as well as his own, but then they got separated and he disappeared for two days. When he returned, stinking of gin, he handed over only twelve dollars.
The next morning, Skyler changed his clothes and walked four blocks to Hill Street, passing the Southern Salvage Company, an army and navy store, and Currie's Body Shop, until he came to a lot where there were
two large, rusted storage tanks fitted with a tall white flagpole, from which drooped an American flag. Next to it was a blue and orange sign that said: HARDEE'S—VALDOSTA'S PLACE TO EAT—and underneath, in smaller letters: All you can get, gravy Sunday. But they were only serving breakfast. And when he came back later, the waitress insisted upon seeing his money before he could be seated, and he had to spread out everything, including the coins, on the counter. They sat him alone near the kitchen door. He ate ravenously, and after he returned to the shelter he felt sick.
Smokey had been around, and he liked to tell stories starring himself that suggested he knew the ways of the world.
"You know," he confided one evening as Skyler lay on his cot, staring at the acoustical tiles above, "this town will give you money just to leave it. That's a fact. You go down to the police station and they'll take you right over to the bus station and buy you a bus ticket to anywhere you want to go. Only thing is, you have to stay gone."
Skyler took to escape by daydreams. In the evenings, his stomach half full from the baloney and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served by the shelter, he would retire to his cot and cover his eyes with one bent arm and spend hours in drifting memories of the island. He did not even know its name or how far away it was, and he did not want to tell Smokey or anyone else about it.
Mostly, he thought of his early years there, when life had seemed simple, straightforward and joyful. He thought a lot about Raisin, but he was not ready to think about Julia—that was still too painful.
One evening, Skyler's daydreams were summarily interrupted. Big Al, the supervisor of the shelter, a man who stripped to his waist and so showed a mountainous belly and thick shoulders covered in a carpet of hair, walked over and kicked a leg of Skyler's cot.
"Follow me," he commanded.
Skyler did as he was told, and trailed behind the big man into his closet of an office. Unbeckoned, he sat across from the desk, which was cluttered with phone books, rags and papers, an ink stand and a teddy bear. The wall was festooned with mechanics' calendars of women bending over to show their bosoms and thrusting out their pelvises.
"I just don't get it," said Al, shaking his head as if genuinely confused. Skyler was the one who was confused. And Al's tone of voice did not augur well.
"You guys coming down here, taking advantage of Southern hospitality."
Skyler looked him in the eyes, but all he could read there was anger.
"I suppose you think it's cool. Big-time writer, grow a beard, come down here, pretend to be what you're not."
Al sat back in his chair, slightly more reflective, ready to strike a pedagogic note.
"I tell you, I don't mind a man being poor, no crime in that at all. But I can't stand a man pretending to be what he's not. Especially if that something is lower than he is. 'Cause that makes him just as low as he's trying to be. You get what I'm saying?"
All Skyler could do was shake his head in dumb incomprehension.
Al sat forward, hunching his elbows on the desk. The air conditioning set the hair on his shoulders moving in waves.
"Let me ask you—you collecting stuff for a new book? You getting lots of—what do you call it?—material?"
Skyler knew it was incumbent upon him to say something.
"I don't know what you're saying. I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, you don't, doncha?"
With that, Al picked up a newspaper and threw it. It struck Skyler in the chest and fell onto his lap. He picked it up and looked at the page that it was opened to. He still didn't understand.
"Look at the picture," commanded Al. Skyler did. It was a photograph of a man, and it looked a lot like him.
"I have to admit—you almost had me fooled. All that nonsense about being slow and so confused. You should get an award for best actor. I have to hand it to you."
He looked at Skyler hostilely and shook his head. "I'll give you five minutes to collect your stuff and get out."
In no time, Skyler found himself out in the back alley, a small bundle under one arm.
"Here," shouted Big Al after him. "Take this as a souvenir of your sojourney down South." He threw the newspaper at Skyler's feet and closed the door with a slam.
Skyler picked up the newspaper. It was called USA Today. He looked at the photograph and saw that it didn't look exactly like him, but close enough to make someone think it was. It appeared to be an ad for a book of some sort. Death Mask. It mentioned New York. He read the name of the author and tore the page out, folded it up and put it in his pocket. Then he shuffled off toward the police station.
Chapter 12
Jude was late for work, and so he approached Bashir wary of a long conversation. He was tempted to duck into the neighboring deli for his morning container of coffee, but the Afghan would have probably spotted him, since his coffee stand was positioned to keep the competition in sight. That would have constituted betrayal and opened a breach in their relationship.
"Morning, Bashir," he said.
He got a gold-toothed smile.
"Morning, boss."
Bashir often called him that.
The Afghan wiped his hands on his apron, plucked a container from the top of the upside-down stack, flipped it under the spout and pulled the tiny black bar toward him, leaning back slightly.
"So," he asked, "everything okay?"
"Things are fine. How about you?"
"Hunky-daisy."
"Hunky-dory."
"Okay."
The handsome olive face clouded over. Bashir moved closer and leaned down to the window.
"Boss, let me ask you"—the voice dropped to a conspiratorial level—"you okay? You in any kind of trouble?"
Jude was nonplussed. "What?"
"Are you in trouble?"
"No, of course not." He was confused. "Why do you ask?"
"Nothing, nothing."
Bashir hesitated, as if he were loath to cross some invisible boundary. He decided to.
"It's just that I see things."
"Like what?"
Bashir was practically whispering now, and moved his eyes around, in almost a parody of looking vigilant.
"I think you're being followed."
"Come on!"
"I mean it. I've seen the guy. Big, muscles, mean-looking. He's got a streak in his hair, like white paint or something. You can't miss it."
"Why do you think he's following me?"
"Because I've seen him. More than once."
Jude laughed it off.
"It's true. He stays back and watches you and then he comes."
"C'mon, get out."
But one look at Bashir's face told him that he was not joking. The man really believed what he was saying.
As Jude walked away, clutching the coffee, he shook his head at the absurdity of the idea. Still, the Afghan was serious. He wasn't making it up. Before Jude entered the Mirror building, he turned to look up and down the sidewalk. No one was there—or rather, a lot of people were there, but no large, muscular man with a distinguishing streak in his hair.
He had to admit, sitting there at his desk, that he was feeling a bit spooked. Who wouldn't be? Being told you're being followed. His mind ran through the possibilities. Someone angered by a story? Someone's boyfriend? Some ancient enemy? Nothing clicked, and he decided it was futile. Nothing to it, I'm sure. Just Bashir being... Bashir.
It would help if he got a decent assignment. He hadn't had one in almost two weeks—not since the mutilated body up in New Paltz. That had been a good story—quickly reported and written like a dream, even if it had been cut to shreds. What the hell—the story that muscled it off the front page hadn't been a total loss: it had led him to Tizzie. She was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time.
After their stroll on the boardwalk Sunday, he'd taken her home to her apartment on the West Side, and she had invited him up for the famous cup of coffee. She hadn't even got around to opening the beans before they were on
the couch. His disclosures had evidently touched her deeply. She was passionate and responsive, but still, he felt, somewhat restrained, as if holding herself back. As for him, he was as sweaty and excited as an adolescent. But he didn't want to press things—it was all too important for that. He wanted everything to go just right.
They'd said a warm good night and had seen each other the night after, club hopping in the Village. They were going to meet again tonight. Three dates in the space of one week—for him that constituted clutter on his social calendar.
He watched the editors conferring and thought he'd check the New Paltz story out again, see if anything had happened worth a follow.
He decided to call Raymond La Barrett, an FBI agent and one of his best law enforcement sources—truth to tell, one of his only law enforcement sources. Jude was not the kind of guy to hit it off with cops or Feds. He had met Raymond three years ago while working on an article about the ten biggest drug dealers in New York, guys who plied their trade more or less openly. The cooperation had been intense and had entailed trust on both sides to skirt the libel laws and get enough about the thugs in the paper to put heat on the police. The article had worked, resulting in six indictments and four convictions. Jude and Raymond had met for a celebration at McSorley's, downed a few drinks and exchanged a few jokes, and struck up a mutually advantageous working relationship.
Raymond was eight years older, an advantage that prompted him to call Jude "kid." Until the FBI man had moved to Washington a year ago, placed in charge of a division with the ominous-sounding title of "Special Operations," they had seen each other every other month or so, and twice gone fishing upstate. They'd worked several stories together and even evolved a loose code on the phone to arrange meetings: if one suggested it was "time for a beer," that was the signal; they alternated—one time at a bar near Jude's apartment, the next near Raymond's place. "Just dumb enough to work," observed Raymond, when he set it up.