Big Machine (42 page)

We sat on his lopsided couch, and he finished three beers before I’d opened one.

“You still on that stuff?” he asked me, his mouth full of pulled pork.

“I’m on a lot of stuff,” I said.

He sneered, which made him look like a sow. When he snorted, I wanted to check for a curly tail. “You ain’t doing no drugs in my fucking house, you feel me?”

“But I brought enough for both of us!”

The pork rested in the space between his lower lip and gums like a wad of chew.

“You always had jokes,” he said.

We went like this for a little while. He and I were the last two child survivors of a long-forgotten cult. We’d suffered through mass murder in a stairway. Had both been fed into the foster care system at age ten and had spent the next eight years in the same group home, one that was affiliated with the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.

It was funny to me that Wilfred could be intolerant about heroin, but turn a blind eye to his own abuses. That reminded me of my old friend Bottlecap, the one who used to hear from the Lord. He was such an infamous drinker that even the beer distributors around Troy knew his name. His favorite bar, the Alleycat, used to send him birthday cards by certified mail if he stayed away too long. If he signed for it, that meant he was still alive. And yet that drunk looked down on me for being a junky. Bottlecap, like Wilfred, believed that if your drug wasn’t fermented, you were out of order.

After a half hour of sniping I’d had three beers and he’d finished eight.

“You want to get some pussy?” Wilfred asked.

“Always,” I said.

He suggested we visit Czech Village. A tourist zone that celebrated the ethnic origins of the city by selling glass figurines, garnet jewelry, baked goods, and meat. He knew two bowlegged women who worked down there. They might let us buy them drinks. Wilfred drove us in an old cargo van, the kind you could live in but shouldn’t.

Before we actually got moving, he gave me my money. Eighteen hundred dollars. All fifty-dollar bills. I counted and recounted them as he started the van. It took him a couple tries, so I counted twice. Right then I believed I really loved Wilfred.

Ten minutes into the trip he said we should stop at his friend’s first. A guy who sold cloned cell phones and doctored driver’s licenses. Those were the kind of crooks I enjoyed. I liked my criminal life lite. Wilfred said everybody called this guy Murder, but I shouldn’t take that too seriously. They only called him that because he had some Belgian last name no one could pronounce correctly, so no one bothered.
Murder
was close enough.

He didn’t have to convince me. I wasn’t scared of anything just then.
Not anymore. I’d expected to land in Cedar Rapids, bring the money to my cousin, and be greeted by two ugly guys who would cut me into pieces. Then feed the parts to a dog. I was afraid Wilfred had started hanging around with heavy crooks like that, but in this life you couldn’t always avoid such a risk. So why did I come to Cedar Rapids if that was my fear?

Eighteen hundred dollars!

And Wilfred suggested that it could lead to more. So when I didn’t get killed, I coasted. We drove past Mount Mercy College, which watched Cedar Rapids from a hill, then alongside Tomahawk Park. Soon we reached Longwood Drive. I memorized the names of places and streets in case Wilfred abandoned me in a cornfield. As long as I kept track, I could find my way. I had no fears, but I wasn’t dumb.

We parked, and I stepped onto the sidewalk. It was warm out. The air smelled like cereal, even this far from the Quaker Oats factory. That made the afternoon seem fun, even silly in a good way. Wilfred and I shared a smile.

I felt positively sanctified as I entered Murder’s home.

A SUIT LAY FLAT
on Ms. Henry’s bed. I heard her in the kitchen and I smelled toast. Didn’t even bother acting bashful as I walked from the bathroom to the bedroom with only the towel around my waist. See me shirtless if you dare, Ms. Henry!

She’d left me a fine outfit, two-button double-breasted brown worsted wool, serge weave and a green pinstripe. A white dress shirt lay underneath. No tie. I’d have to go without, back to a Byron collar for me.

I thought of Adele’s story again, the two suits she’d found hanging in the closet of this cabin when she’d first arrived in 2003. Some Unlikely Scholar had left the outfits, never returned to reclaim them. He never reclaimed this cabin either. It was as much of a relic as his coats—both had held his body. Where was he now?

As I dressed, I remembered Gartrelle Meadows. The Unlikely Scholar whose files I’d been reading in Vermont the week before. The man who’d walked into the South Bronx parking garage and recorded the ghostly voice repeating itself.
Electricity. Electricity
. I’d felt warmth for my man as I’d leafed through his notes. Camaraderie. Even though I’d never met him, I knew him. But what about the people who’d been a part of his life before the Library? Would they have been as charitable about his memory as me? I doubt it, and I don’t blame them. You can only abuse people’s faith in you for so long.

How many years had I been doing it?

In the living room Ms. Henry had already set out the toast and butter,
some jam and a small plate of sausages. Her order at one end of the table, and mine, six feet away.

I walked into the kitchen. She looked wrecked. It didn’t help that I had showered and changed but she hadn’t. Her riding suit had dots of Claude’s blood along the right sleeve.

“You need help?” I asked.

“I’m all done. Go sit down.”

She came out with two glasses of orange juice, put mine next to my plate of toast, and walked to her table setting.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d do all this,” I said. “Making a meal for a man. Like you want his company.”

She sipped her orange juice, then sighed.

“I need men, Ricky. Men are the ones who act like they don’t need me.”

“It’s only an act,” I said.

We ate quietly.

Finally, she said, “I’m used to knowing exactly what I need to do to get what I want.”

“But you don’t know what to do now?” I asked.

“I don’t know what I want.”

“You and me could go anywhere, Adele. You got our money back from Claude. We could buy two bus tickets. All the way to Seattle.”

“You think we’re going to blend in, in Seattle?” she asked.

“They’ve got black people in Seattle,” I said. “Don’t act like it’s 1910.”

She took a couple bites of her toast. “Is that what you want to do, Ricky?”

“Part of me does,” I said. “But the rest would be ashamed if I did.”

Adele looked to her right, out the window of her cabin, at the handful of trees growing a few yards down the hillside.

“I been on my own,” she said. “Looking out for myself since forever. When I got the invitation from the Library, I couldn’t get up there fast enough. And when they welcomed me, I just couldn’t believe it. A person like me.”

She tore at her napkin, dropping the bits right on top of her half-eaten breakfast.

“I’m just supposed to give that up?” she asked, more herself than me.

“But you’re not alone now,” I said.

Adele looked at me again. “You know the last time my mother was really proud of me? Seventh grade. I won a spelling bee. Beat everyone in my school.”

“What was the winning word?”

“Exalted,
” she said.

“Exalted? That’s it?”

“It was a bad school.” Adele laughed. “But Maxine kept my certificate on the fridge for a year.”

“I bet she still has it,” I said. “Folded up in a drawer somewhere.”

Adele sucked her teeth. “You think so?”

“She’s your mother, Adele. She hasn’t given up on you.”

Adele rose from the table.

Once she’d showered, she dressed in an olive middy blouse and walking skirt, a Crusher hat, and black gaiters. I whistled when I saw her. She looked well-qualified for the job. Adele turned, to show off the outfit, then caught herself and stopped.

Her old green handbag carried a compact umbrella, two road flares, and that pistol of hers, a little gray automatic. She gave that to me.

“You went back down to the Devils’ Well to get this?”

“That was a revolver. This is an automatic.”

Ms. Henry walked me out and along the side of the cabin. Adele’s blue garage door swung upward with one good tug. It wasn’t the cleanest place. Insects had done a lot of decorating. An immense spiderweb filled one small window. But forget that, how about the car: a green 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC Coupe. Snooky’s chariot.

“His wife didn’t mind you keeping this?”

“She didn’t want it around. She was going to sell it, but I asked for it.”

“And she just handed it over?”

“As far as she knew, Snooky died believing in the Library. Cherise loved him too much to cut us off entirely.”

I walked to the passenger door of that old Mercedes-Benz. “Let’s hit it, then,” I said.

She stood by the taillight. “Wrong side, Ricky.”

“What do you mean? I can’t drive.”

Ms. Henry pressed one finger against the rear window. “But it’s an automatic.”

I looked inside. “That’s a stick shift, Ms. Henry. And I can’t work either one.”

She looked again while I leaned back, my butt against the side of the hood. Me and her, she and I, a pair of city kids. We’d never learned how to drive.

“How’d you even get it here?” I asked, pointing at the garage roof.

“It was towed.”

“Well, I’m not walking,” I said. “That’s out. It’s just not possible.”

“You want to ride on the handlebars of my bike?” she snapped.

She pointed to that silver beast of hers, propped against the wall. It looked even more monstrous than I’d imagined. Half-mechanical, halfanimal.
The curved front fender looked like a lip drawn back into a snarl.

“This is great,” I said. “Maybe I can steal some kid’s skateboard.”

Adele looked ready to yell, but she contained herself.

“We can find another bike,” she said. “The Washburns couldn’t have taken all of theirs.”

They were going to be helping us out after all.

AS SOON AS WE’D WALKED
into Murder’s living room, I knew Wilfred had set me up.

It’s frightening to step into a place and understand you’re a victim. I’m not talking about a bad feeling or a vague sense. I mean knowing. A quick fire runs through your heart and limbs. You go stiff because you’re aware something’s about to happen, but you can’t think clearly enough to escape. I shivered, involuntarily, and then hands swarmed over me. That’s it. The front door shut and I was trapped. Murder didn’t even get out of his love seat. He had plenty of friends in the room.

Those hands pushed me to the ground so quick that I didn’t even scream. No thoughts of any kind. One minute I’m nodding at our fat Belgian host, and next there’s carpet fibers scratching my neck.

The living room was small. This was one of those houses that look bigger on the outside. Lots of little rooms, instead of a few large ones. This house was probably built back when people were only waist-high. One hundred years old? Two hundred? The air stank of timelessness.

From my place on the ground Murder looked bizarre. I don’t know how tall he was. Like I said, he never stood up, but the man had to be five feet wide. Not hard to guess how he got that way, because he had a supermarket bag full of butterscotch candies in his lap. Murder didn’t suck on those sweets either. He’d pop one yellow disc in his mouth and chew it like a potato chip. If I hadn’t seen that it was candy, I would’ve sworn he was eating glass.

“Your cousin does this to you,” Murder said, between bites. “You understand?”

The man barely opened his mouth, so his accented English was forced through his pinched little lips. The Belgian didn’t speak. He spat.

“Wilfred?” I shouted. “Wil?”

The Belgian nodded, but I hadn’t been speaking to him. I was just calling out for the boy who’d held my hand in that stairwell twenty-seven years before.

But he wasn’t there. Wilfred Tanner, the man he’d become, said, “We’re not related.”

Murder sucked another butterscotch into his mouth and chewed it to shards.

“But this is what you tell me. ‘Cousin Ricky is bringing money’ Isn’t it what you say?”

“Me and Ricky don’t share blood, that’s what I mean. We spent our lives together. That’s why I said cousin.”

Murder laughed. “But you don’t say cousin now.”

Lying facedown on the ground, I saw all these butterscotch shavings clotting the carpet. Whatever didn’t make it down his throat fell to the ground. His bare feet were covered in the stuff. Had Murder ever moved?

“You must be careful who to trust,” the Belgian said to me.

I spoke to him for the first time. I said, “I promise never to trust Wilfred again.”

The men holding me down laughed at this. One of them was stepping on the small of my back, and I felt his laugh when he pressed harder into my spine. How many of them were there? Five or six probably. I couldn’t say. I hadn’t had time to count. They’d all been gathered right inside the doorway. That seemed like a lot of muscle just for skinny little me.

“Do you want to say something more with your cousin?” Murder asked.

Wilfred bent low. His fat shoulders and head filled my view. He smelled like ketchup and beer. “Doubt is the big machine. Don’t you remember, Ricky? Ain’t you learned that yet?”

I said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Wilfred snorted. “Shut up, crackhead.”

Then he went into my pants and took back his eighteen hundred dollars.

“What is that money there?” Murder asked.

Wilfred stood again.

“That’s what you paid me this morning. He wouldn’t have come in here without it.”

“That is a good idea,” Murder said.

“Yeah,” Wilfred said, almost casually.

I listened to him count the fifty-dollar bills, and in that time Murder watched him. The men on top of me shifted and sighed. I think they wanted to get to their work. Chopping me up and feeding the parts to dogs, no doubt.

Fucking Wilfred Tanner.