Revolution #9

by Peter Abrahams

  “That might have to come out,” Charlie said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The bullet that’s in there.”

  There was a knock at the door. “All gassed up, you two,” said the attendant, not quite concealing his amusement.

  Footsteps moved softly away. Charlie washed his hands, pulled strips of coarse paper towel from the dispenser and dampened them, then pressed them on the wound to stop the bleeding.

  She cried out. From outside the door came a snicker.

  When Charlie lifted the wad of paper towels, blood still seeped out. “We have to find a doctor.”

  “No doctors.”

  Charlie dampened more paper towels, covered the wound, wrapped his belt around the covering. He picked up the bandages and the tape and flushed them down the toilet, washed off the plastic and threw it in the trash, wiped up the blood with paper towels, flushed them away too.

  “You’re good at this,” she said, tilting her head as though to see him from a new perspective. “You’re not what I would have thought.”

  He helped her pull up her jeans.

  “I can walk,” she said.

  They went out together. Rebecca was limping badly, but she walked. Charlie paid the grinning attendant. They got in the car and drove off. Rebecca was silent for a minute or two. “The honeymooners,” she said. Then she began to laugh. It went on and on. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, ran down her face. It was abandoned, hilarious laughter, but not contagious enough to infect Charlie.

  He found a drugstore and bought what he thought he needed. He got off the interstate and followed an old highway until he came to a motel. It had a broken sign, dirty windows, no customers.

  “Check-in’s not till four,” said the man behind the desk.

  “We’re not staying the night,” Charlie told him.

  This man had been around longer than the gas station attendant. He wasn’t amused, or even interested. “Twenty bucks,” he said, sticking a fresh toothpick in his mouth and handing Charlie a key. He didn’t ask him to sign anything.

  The room was at the far end. Charlie parked in front of it. “The locals think we’re sex maniacs,” he said.

  “Is that so bad?” She limped in.

  Charlie had expected the room to smell of Lysol, but it smelled of other things instead. There were ants in the sink, mouse turds on the floor, cigarette burns on the bedspread.

  “I suppose you’re faithful to this wife of yours,” Rebecca said.

  I haven’t been tested, Charlie thought. He said: “Let’s see what we can do about your leg.”

  He spread towels on the bed, had her lie down. He cleaned the area around the wound with sterile pads and hydrogen peroxide, then dripped some hydrogen peroxide into the round tear. She hissed. He rolled one of the pads into a taut cylinder and stuck it inside, gently as he could. She hissed again. He withdrew the pad, now bloody, and for a moment could see deep into the wound, all the way down to a stubby chunk of metal. He took a long pair of tweezers from its package, dipped it in the hydrogen peroxide, and said: “This is going to hurt like hell.”

  “Do it.”

  He did. She didn’t make a sound.

  · · ·

  Charlie drove. Rebecca slept in the backseat. They crossed the state line into New York, got on the Thruway. Night closed around them. Charlie’s body was tired, his mind wide awake. He found himself picturing the two round holes in Andrew Malik’s chest. Then he began remembering their conversation. He remembered telling Malik what he did for a living. And he remembered Malik’s barking laugh after he had said: “What other bomb is there?” And: It doesn’t matter anyway. She had said that. He began pushing pieces around in his mind, and was still pushing them around when he turned onto the Mass. Pike, and not long after, as he approached the exit that led up into the hills to Morgan College.

  “Rebecca?” he said. There was no answer, no need to mention the detour.

  He took the exit.

  Charlie drove up into the hills and down into the valley, as he had driven with his mother and Ollie; with Svenson and Mr. G. The town was dark, the campus a darker shape inside it. He checked his watch: 4:05.

  Charlie parked near the central quad. He rolled down his window. The air was warm, the night quiet. He heard a few notes of music in the distance; then a breeze rose and swept the music away. Rebecca stirred in the back.

  “Blake? Are we there?”

  He turned to her. She sat up, looked around. “Where are we?”

  He didn’t answer. A few moments passed. Then she stiffened.

  “I want to show you something,” he said.

  “We don’t have time for nostalgia.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  “Or is it some kind of therapy?”

  “No,” he said, but maybe it was.

  “Because I told you—I don’t have a guilt button.”

  “There’s nothing to feel guilty about. It was an accident, right?”

  “Right.”

  They got out of the car, walked onto the quad. It was lit here and there with dim orange lights. Rebecca was still limping, but not as badly. They crossed the grass, stepped onto the crushed-brick path. The crunching under his feet suddenly opened Charlie’s mind, releasing clear memories. He remembered that night: remembered Malik and Rebecca talking to her father on the phone; remembered that when he returned from planting the bomb, they had been out and had come back with grass stains on their knees; and most of all he remembered their tension, rising and rising, even after four-thirty passed, and their refusal to accept that the bomb was a dud.

  Rebecca took a deep breath. “It’s a pretty place,” she said.

  “Quiet,” Charlie said.

  Someone was coming toward them. Rebecca took Charlie’s hand, squeezed it hard. The figure came closer, a male figure, talking to himself. “Isotopes, isotopes, isotopes,” he was saying. As he went by, Charlie recognized him: Stuart Levine, Jr. He didn’t appear to see them at all.

  The chapel loomed on their right. Rebecca didn’t glance at it. They stopped in front of the Ecostudies Center.

  The boy’s face was tilted toward the crowd. It looked absolutely unmarred, the face of a healthy eleven- or twelve-year-old who happened to be sleeping in the middle of a wild scene. But he wasn’t moving at all.

  “Well, well, well,” Rebecca said, looking at the ecostudies sign. “Success.”

  “Success?”

  “At least we got rid of the ROTC.”

  “They’ve got a new building near the gym. Bigger and better.”

  He led her around to the back, knelt in front of the hatch, drew the bolts, swung it open. “Inside,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Rebecca crawled in. Charlie went in after her. He felt in his pocket, found matches, the matches from the Catamount Bar and Grille. He lit one, crawled past her, across the earthen floor, first damp, then dry, past the gardening tools, all the way to the three cement blocks. The match went out. Her hand found his ankle, grasped it, dug in. He lit another match. She let go.

  He turned, handed her the burning match. He twisted around, pushed the blocks aside. The match went out.

  He lit another, felt for Rebecca’s hand, took it, pulled her forward. “Dig,” he said.

  They lay on their stomachs, side by side, heads almost touching, the match burning in Charlie’s fingers. She looked at him, the anger line a deep shadow between her eyes. “Why?” she said.

  “Dig.”

  She dug her hands into the earth. Already dug once, it offered little resistance. Her finger hooked a strap. She pulled out Malik’s khaki knapsack.

  “Look inside.”

  She looked. “What is it?”

  The match went out.

  “The bomb I made,” he said. They were in a tiny black universe where his voice was everything. He lit another match, then drew the insulated wires out of the knapsack. “It didn�
�t explode—it couldn’t explode—because I’d taped this wire, right here.” He held it in front of her eyes.

  She barely glanced at it. “So?”

  He grabbed her wrist. The match fell, went out. And they were back in the tiny universe with just his voice: “So something else exploded, some other bomb. A bomb you and Malik planted—under the flowerpot probably, because you came back with grass stains on your knees.”

  Silence.

  “I want to know about that bomb.”

  More silence. At last she said, “You want off the hook, is that it?”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Keep your voice down. Someone might hear.”

  “Where?” He tried to keep his voice down, but it wouldn’t obey.

  “Christ. Daddy got it for us. I think from the Panthers. Is that what you want to know? You turn out to be a fine upstanding citizen. Congratulations.”

  It was what he had wanted to know, but he felt no relief. “Why did you do it?”

  “Get another bomb? Because we didn’t think you could pull it off. Malik didn’t think you could. I knew you a little better—I didn’t think you would. And I was sure you’d done something tricky—the way you were so calm that night.”

  “But that didn’t stop you from telling your father that it was my fault, that I rigged the timer.”

  “That wasn’t to protect me. It was to protect him. He couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d thought someone had actually died because of something he’d done. He’s an idealist.”

  Charlie laughed out loud. “But you’re a pragmatist.”

  “Correct.”

  “Committing pragmatic little murders when necessary, like down at the Oakland docks.”

  Rebecca said nothing. Charlie reached for the matches, wanting to see her face, but the package was empty. He felt for the knapsack, took it, began backing away, toward the hatch. “I’ll leave the keys in the car,” he said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I’m not going to help you. Not this time.”

  He felt her shift her body. He half expected her to reach for him, to hold on to him. Instead, something hard and cool touched the side of his head. She hadn’t been sleeping that whole time in the backseat; she’d had time to push a few pieces around in her own mind, time to silently take the gun out of the suitcase.

  “Yes,” she said. “This time too.”

  The chapel bell struck five.

  37

  It was the kind of freighter Hugo Klein always imagined when he pictured freighters: old and slow, streaked with rust on deck and hull, smelling of oil and grease. This one was Polish: the Wladyslaw Gomulka, too decrepit to bother renaming. Simple, heavy meals were served for passengers in the officers’ dining room at seven, noon, and six; simple, heavy snacks at ten and three. Klein, following the captain’s instructions, stayed in his cabin. At six, ten, noon, three, and six, he would hear a metallic clatter outside his door, open it, and find food, little of which he ate. He napped during the day, slept as he hadn’t slept in years at night. No phone calls, no clients, no enemies, no battles: just the throb of the engines deep below, and the constant rocking of the sea. In this rusty cocoon Klein dreamed boyhood dreams of adventure and desert isles, and imagined sailing the Wladyslaw Gomulka forever.

  But Klein didn’t lose track of time, and he was up early, dressed and alert on the morning he had to be. He gazed out the porthole. The ocean was deep blue and smooth, like blueberry jelly. It was going to work. She would be safe in Cuba, and he would be safe too. Safe from her: that was the implication, and he didn’t shrink from it. Whatever had happened at the pier—and her story was that she had gone along reluctantly and that the group had been on the point of abandoning the idea when the guards saw them and started shooting—she seemed to be the only survivor. That didn’t surprise him. She was strong and brave, and in another time and place might have become an historic figure, like La Pasionaria. She’d been willing to … yes: throw her life away for a cause. He remembered her as a baby, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen—and those eyes, shining with her brightness. His own eyes dampened. No, he told himself. How could he think like that, so conventional, so bourgeois? She hadn’t thrown her life away. That was how others lived—in office towers, factories, country clubs, compromising their identities away. She was pure. And if not effective, so what? Even Christ had been a failure in his lifetime.

  But she was the only survivor. That bothered him. And if Andrew Malik had indeed been murdered, that bothered him too.

  There was a knock at the door. It was the captain, a fat little man in skimpy shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. He beckoned with a hairy finger.

  Klein followed him down the corridor, up stairs, on deck. It was deserted. A bright red boat hung on a hoist at the stern: an inboard, about twenty-five feet long, with a dive platform, a Canadian flag sticker on the windscreen, and no name.

  “Pretty pretty,” the captain said.

  He took a chart from his pocket, unfurled it. Three X’s were marked on it, two offshore, one on land. The coastal X marked Cosset Pond, the offshore X’s their present position and the rendezvous point. The hairy finger traced the route: the inward and outward compass bearings were written on the chart. The offshore X’s seemed close to land, not far outside the territorial waters. The captain was earning his money.

  “Hokay?” he said.

  “Okay.”

  He handed Klein the keys. Klein climbed into the red boat. The captain went to the controls, pressed a button. The hoist swung the boat out, high over blueberry water. It was going to work.

  “Pliss to fair liv yacket,” the captain called, and lowered him over the side.

  · · ·

  Spanish voices woke him. Soft Spanish voices in the corner of a dark room, a man’s and a woman’s. They fell silent. There was a giggle, later a moan, then footsteps, going away.

  Goodnow sat up. Something tugged at his arm. He looked down. His arm was a shriveled white thing emerging from the shadows. There was a needle in it, attached to a tube that ran from a plastic bag hanging on a hook. Hospital: but he had no idea what hospital, or how he had entered. He searched his mind for his most recent memory, and found it: fluffy clouds, seen from above.

  A lovely image, like fields of snow and childhood Christmases, and he savored it for a while. Some time passed before he made an astonishing discovery: he was without pain. Goodnow was not a religious man, but his first reaction, perhaps stimulated by those thoughts of Christmas—not any Christmas he had known, but the Christmas of Dickens and advertising—his first reaction was that he had died. Was this the afterlife, Spanish lovemaking in the corner, a needle in the arm, no pain?

  The tube was taped to his arm. He stripped off the tape, pulled out the needle. Blood bulbed out, trickled over his skin. He raised his forearm to his mouth and sucked it. Why? He didn’t know, but it tasted good.

  Goodnow swung his legs over the side and stood up. He did it easily, like a young, healthy man, without pain. He felt strong. It had been so long since he had felt any strength at all that he almost couldn’t put a name to the feeling.

  He went to a closet, found his clothes. He let the pajama bottoms he was wearing fall to the floor and dressed himself. He couldn’t find his shoes and socks, but his wallet was there and so were a set of Avis car keys. He walked barefoot out into a hall, entered an elevator, pressed G, was lowered, got off, crossed a lobby, and went outside.

  He looked back: “Boston City Hospital,” read the sign. He moved away, around a corner, up a side street, not thinking, just going in the direction his feet wanted to move. Cars were parked in the lane. One of them had an Avis sticker on the bumper. The horse knows the way, as he had told Svenson. He stuck the keys in the door. They worked.

  Goodnow got into the car and drove. He turned this way and that, and then saw the expressway. It loomed ahead of him, a skeletal structure, black against a band of red that had broken through
in the east. He turned onto it and headed south, toward Cosset Pond.

  Day broke overhead, a beautiful blue day. He pressed his bare foot on the gas and swung into the passing lane; driving like a teenager on a big date, he thought with a smile. Yes, he’d lost Svenson, and that was too bad. And Charlie Ochs had proved unpredictable. But Hugo Klein had talked to Charlie on tape, and if Svenson hadn’t had the tape when he died, then it was possible that Charlie did. Even if he didn’t, he would remember the conversation. That might be enough. Goodnow pressed a little harder on the gas.

  He didn’t slow down until he came down off the highway and into Cosset Pond. A pretty little place, he thought. His plan was to follow the road over the bridge that spanned the cut, where the Pond emptied into the sea, and continue around to Charlie’s house. But just before the bridge, he saw a restaurant, the Bluefin Café, and all at once was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt a hunger so deep. He was desperate for food. He parked, went in, almost running, and ordered two roast beef sandwiches and a piece of pecan pie to go. The waiter glanced down at his bare feet but said nothing.

  Goodnow carried the food back to the car and crossed the bridge. Instead of driving to Charlie’s, he turned onto the little track that led to the lookout over the cut and parked at the end.

  Goodnow gazed across the water, all the way to the horizon, where sky blue and sea blue met. Lovely. He unpacked a sandwich, took a big bite.

  The pain got him then: pain that made all his previous pain unworthy of the name. The Gerber baby had sprung up to full size during the night and was going to split him apart. Goodnow’s new strength vanished at once. His hands, frantic, rooted in his pockets for the pills. They were gone. He thought of the needle, the tube, the drip, knew what had been in it, and started to cry. He had the strength for that. Then the Gerber man inside him flexed his muscles. Goodnow doubled up, his head against the glass.

  The line where sky blue met sea blue was a black line. It began to thicken, to thicken and thicken, eating the blue away.