Man Gone Down (45 page)

Maybe I only tricked myself, that they'd been magically restored to health because it wasn't such a great idea
—
bringing two infectious children to visit a convalescing mother and child, but it had been a hard week for everyone. The boys had never spent time away from their mom. And I'd been traveling back and forth from Brooklyn to Washington Heights. There'd been a lot of dragging hours filled with anxiety, even dread. A lot of pain and blood. And when you were finally born you were so small that I could hold you in one hand
—
dusky, bald, struggling for breath. They took you away immediately. I had to let them. I had to let you go.

I close the notebook. It's the best I can do. I put it back in my bag. Where is the moon? It should be high up in the eastern sky, way above the courthouse, but it's nowhere to be found—no stars either, just overstretched clouds, purple-gray and static. They seem, at first, to be translucent, but I don't know—the glow—perhaps they're reflective
instead, weakly returning the city's residual light. They look dry, but there must be moisture in them. It's not raining anymore but the air is thick and damp. Occasional drops randomly fall from above like tepid drips from sweaty cellar pipes. I don't know why I've stopped here—Foley Square. It smells like fish—old fish, dead fish, washed up, or floating, lost under the shadows of the bridges. The scent comes up on the wind from the south and seems to stop and swirl around the square. It's a strange little place. I've only driven or run past it. It's a narrow diamond—Worth Street to the north; Center and Federal Plaza run along the east and west and join at the southern tip. At the top, next to Worth, is Thomas Paine Park, an empty gesture at a fenced-in green space.

At my feet is a directional star—with thin strips of brass inlaid to accentuate the line—at the center of which is a large circle. The first clauses of the Constitution follow the arc along the inside. And inside that circle are strange engraved scenes of British persecuting Americans, as well as Americans persecuting Americans—early patriots, lynched slaves, burned witches—some vague apology of sorts, I don't know. This is an African burial ground—both free and enslaved—four hundred or more, under the tarmac, under the massive footings of the official buildings in which are engraved grave maxims:
THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IS THE FIRMEST PILLAR OF GOOD GOVERNMENT.
It seems almost too sad to even attempt to offer commentary on the absurd conglomeration: Dead blacks honored in swamps claimed by Indian, then Dutch, then English, then Irish, all in the shadow of a soot-stained alabaster Greco-Roman monolith.

One of the points of the star is a path that leads to the center of the square. In fact, there are several paths that lead there—like a miniature of the Place d'Etoile. Perhaps that's too grand—or not even close. These paths are rose-colored granite, edged by gray, in the midst of lilacy-gray hexagonal pavers. The colors and patterns create the opposite of what I imagine to be the desired effect—they stop and push you out, make you focus on the garishness and want to leave. If you don't, if you hang on, you'll see the giant sculpture in the middle of
the square. Two steps up—it begins with a polished black granite pool, rolled at the edges, making it look like an enormous ashtray. It's half filled with water. The spray and the caged lights are off for some reason. There's less change than you'd think—or perhaps more when you consider the easy access. But to me, the scale and the still water make it seem unreceptive to wishes.

An elongated, narrow trapezoid, like a heavy footbridge, spans the water from east to west. Atop it is an abstract sculpture. From far away you almost miss it—dwarfed by the official buildings. Up close, it dwarfs you. It's at least fifty feet tall and resembles, at first, a sword with an elaborate and asymmetric hilt, pointing skyward. If you step back and circle the pool, it looks more like a phallus, then a dead tongue of flame, or perhaps the marker the fire has left in space—black, solid, unlit—pointing up to the strange, double-layered purple sky, up to the faithless lights, defacto vacuums. A symbol, perhaps, of a debt either owed or paid or still disputed, like a lone protester, vigilant outside the courthouse.

I've read about it—three hundred tons of black granite—a memorial to the displaced dead. If you came this way, moving slowly, on foot, with time to spare, and followed the curve of the pool around the south side, you'd eventually see the large stone marker, which the heavy path across the pools abuts. There are words carved into it.
“Commissioned by the city
. . .” Then the words of the sculptor himself—a chiseled disclaimer yanking it from the abstract:
“The Chi Wara rests on a horizontal plane which symbolizes the canoes used by the Native Americans, the slave vessels that transported African men, women and children and the passenger ships that brought immigrants to this country. The part of the granite these words are inscribed in represents the land.”
Six years and three hundred tons of granite later he still wants to tell me exactly what it is. I give up.

If you come this way and leave the absolutely defined sign behind, resist the urge to look at the enormous structure that is One Centre
Street, not consider the concrete barricades positioned on the sidewalk to discourage vans traveling toward the walls at ramming speed in an attempt to blow the whole thing down, you'll see that the rats use the gutter like an expressway, scampering to and from the grease spots left behind from the vending carts that line the sidewalk during the day. The way the cars dismounting the bridge seem to want you to stray off the curb and step into the end of their blind turn. The bush, the flower patch, the bench, and the plaque:

When the perfected bridge shall permanently and uninterruptedly connect the cities of New York and Brooklyn, the daily thousands who cross it will consider it a sort of natural and inevitable phenomenon, such as the rising and setting of the sun. When they will unconsciously overlook the difficulties surmounted before the structure spans the stream and will perhaps undervalue the indomitable courage, absolute faith, the consummate genius which assured the engineer's triumph.

—Thomas Kinsella,
Brooklyn Eagle,
1872

Gaining the bridge is different from the Manhattan side. The incline is steeper and the traffic rises with you. I'm troubled by the flatness of things: the dull thud of my boots on the concrete; my uneven breaths; the couple—the girl who pretends there's nothing odd about what she sees, the boy faking bravery. I thud past them, up the incline. The lights are electric, overhead and out of sight. To the left the projects rise up, framing quick views of the Manhattan Bridge beyond. To the right is the ancient swamp, built over by tanneries, then towers. There's the river—snatches of it between the still existing tenements and saloons. The wind picks up, snaps the flag, and seems to rock the cables. Swirling wind—it seems to blow simultaneously on each side. At first it drowns out all the sounds you might hear, but if you concentrate, you can feel that it blows only from the south. You know the tide is going out because you can hear the gusts pull against the surface of the river, twist it into superficial eddies, making the sound of water trickling down a drain.

I don't know why I'm running: I've got nothing. The sky up here is azure, slick, as though all the stars have coalesced to form an almost transparent yellow glow atop the blue. But it's just the electric lights below. I look north, up the river to the other bridges, the replicating strings with their own evenly spaced lights. I wonder where Claire is tonight—how those damned mojitos were, how the children fell asleep, if they're sleeping at all. There's no one there. Edith, but Edith doesn't count—never has. What will she do when they tell her they're afraid of the dark, especially there—the unfamiliar noises and the impenetrable dark of the moonless rural night?
Whip-poor-wills are whip-poor-wills; coyotes are coyotes
—cold comfort for a terrified child. What did she say to my girl—such a bad sleeper? What did she say to her namesake—
little Edy?
It's always made me gag when people have called her that—
but what's in a name?
Edith wasn't there when she was born: a month early and undersized for that. She came out with her umbilical in a tight knot. It seemed that we all just stood there staring—trying to understand who could've possibly tied it. The fact that she wasn't crying, wasn't doing much of anything, snapped me out of my shock. She was barely breathing. I had to let them take her. Claire was seizing from preeclampsia, bleeding from her torn uterus. Claire doesn't know how bad it was—for both the girl and her. And it wasn't because no one told her. I did. She switched between pain, blank-faced stoicism, and narcotic sleep. And I alternated between her and our girl. Claire had only the IV drip, but the girl, she was tangled in tubes, monitor wires, breathing apparatus. There in the incubator, naked except for the tiny diaper and the striped cotton knit cap—seemingly always with her eyes closed. I fit my hand through the twist of wires to rub her belly, hoping that she'd open her eyes, just once, for me. When she finally did wake, when I finally did get to lift her out of that antiseptic plastic cage, she opened only one eye at first—the coal-black pupil circled by the ring of earthen brown, circled again by an indigo halo. I thought I was looking into the eye of God. I went to see Claire, who had awakened finally, too, and the two of us waited, it seemed through the night, for that other eye to open.

If you come this way, hear your heavy feet on the path, you'll see that the wood planks are weathered and thin and that there's nothing below—only the dark river. You run slowly up the ascent, watching the giant cables rise to meet the granite towers; the great blocks of soot-darkened stone, the line of the hundred-year-old mortar, and the strength they convey make sense. Their dual pointed arches—like the start of a great throat. The cable pairs rise up from the planks, like nerve bundles. The steel beams are close enough to touch—the giant, riveted girders, the cables holding the suspension line in place. The steel beams are disintegrating along with the putty-colored paint. It all seems to sway impossibly in the wind. The cross-hatched smaller lines are sheathed by the night and the artificial lights.

The benches invite you to sit and stare in either direction: north to watch the garbage scows, the bridges beyond; south—the docked clipper ship, the dinosaur cranes on the other shore. Most of Brooklyn is dark, save for the electric clock, high atop the watchtower. If it weren't so hazy, you'd see the islands, the statue, the narrows, and the promise of open sea.

I look down at the roadway and along the beams. Some are rigged with floodlights; others have side rails and function as catwalks, offering passage to the edge. I follow them out, watch the water twist northward.

I take the bait, sit, get out the notebook, and write:

Notes
—

Big Nig climbs the cable. Saurian, simian. Bag full of money over his shoulder. It's a long way down to the water. He thinks about dropping the bag down, let the evidence disappear in the river—but they've seen him. They know who he is. So the way out or the way through is not to be taken alive. Courage, he thinks, would never lead a man to build a bridge. Courage would lead you in
—
unknowing as to whether you'd been buoyed or swallowed. Fuck you Thomas Kinsella.

I start running again. It's amazing how much the bridge shakes, even when a lone biker rides by. You can see it in the electrical wires that run along the sides of the walkway. It's not the wind. The moving wires match the motion of the bridge, not the blowing flags, so you know it's the bridge's rhythm.

You can hear them—their footsteps—lovers on the boardwalk, making vows, holding hands, sneaking kisses, or kissing unabashed. Their voices carry this way and that, beyond where they stand. You can hear them. Remember them, every evening, echoes of promises made.

I wonder if the children are sleeping, how the dark in their rooms collects and moves within itself, what flesh its given, what teeth and claws. Where is Claire sleeping?
Where is the moon?
Why do they have lights on the beams over the roadway—pointing up to bounce against that hazy damn sky?—illuminating some triumph of man's reason, the ability to cross the deep dark.
Look what we have done! We've spanned the sullen brown god
—with bone-steel, with sinew cable and stretched over it all a skin of light and shadow. And the bridge flexes and shimmers, not in the wind but with an internal motion of its own. It pulses, the motion complex, unharmonic, retching, shuddering sea beast. I am the howl of the sea belly, the echoing wail of its remains, the living memory of all the swallowed faces. Inside, now I'm out. But not for love or valor, not for the good fight—two dukes up for a fallen friend. What would Lila have said?
Into the toilet with you
—
out, get out.
A river
is
a good place for ghosts, but only because they are deep, dark, and old.

When I realize that I've left the lucky jeans behind, I have to stop and laugh. I take out the money she paid me and count it: one-fifty—a wash. The cosmos has no sense of humor, so it shouldn't play jokes on a soul, but I have to laugh again. I start to trot. When I hit the down slope, I break into a run. The paired suspension cables end, bury themselves under the planks. I'm off the water, over the first knuckle of
Brooklyn, descending into its topography. Cars speed by. Their headlights connect this bridge to the other. No more water. No more sky. One last elevated look over Brooklyn's grid—empty dark centers with points of light streaking around their edges. A new wave of fish rot drifts up mixed with exhaust fumes, just in time to make me remember that I should feel like shit—a strange, clammy sweat on me and inside, the burn of pure shame.
“You're so good in a crisis,”
Claire used to say. I have to laugh again. The crisis is over. I come off the heaving bridge, turn back once to the electric lights, then into Brooklyn, contemplating the life of an imploded star.