The Death of Wendell Mackey (25 page)

Diane stood up, reassembled her permasmile, although with trepidation. Often, the Good Reverend Biddle wanted the healed to address the assembly, and speak of the opened lungs, or clear mind, or free-flowing colon. There would be the necessary “Hallelujah” or “Praise Jesus,” followed by a medical testimony. But Diane knew she would be the rat nearing the trap, a fraud exposed as she spoke of things about which she knew nothing. And they would turn on her, turn on her by turning away from her. There could be no greater curse than shutting off the spigot to the holy power.

“Diane,” said Biddle, gesturing to the mike, “come on up and—”

“No. No, I can’t. I’m just…too overwhelmed.” She reached for Wendell, grabbed his hand, and began to move towards the opposite side of the stage.

The woman with shot glass eyeglasses stepped forward between the two gatekeepers, and in the front row a line of obese women in flower print dresses jumped to their feet and flung their hands into the air.

Wendell looked back as they descended the stage to see Biddle recede from view, fearing that he would too quickly recede from memory, that the whole service—canary-clad singer, ululating worshippers, hopping epileptics all—would fade like the voices on a radio as the batteries begin to die. He needed something that would last.

“Y’all’re welcome back any time,” said the singer as they passed the band. Diane nodded. The singer turned to Wendell. “Did you feel it little man?” she asked.

Wendell stopped and stared at her, pulling away from his mother’s hand. The din had increased markedly. The shot glasses woman had just fallen back into the safety net of brown suits. The obese women in the front row were hugging each other as two other women in the aisle began to spin slowly, like meandering tops. They lifted their praises to the ceiling, but with words that Wendell didn’t understand. Long syllables,
aaah
s and
ooah
s, punctuated with staccato plugs of sharp consonants, an oddly melodious, controlled verbal chaos. Holy language, they called it. The tongues of angels. Again, he should have been frightened, but this night, it was
different
.

Wendell nodded to the singer. “Yes. I think so,” he said.

It was getting louder in the room, but she read his lips easily. She cupped her hands over her mouth, then opened her arms, as if presenting young Wendell to the crowd.

“It doesn’t end here little man,” she added. “He makes us new. The Lord makes us good and new.” But Diane had taken Wendell’s hand again and began pulling him towards the back of the room. The singer blew Wendell a kiss before she turned back towards the stage, picked up a tambourine, and began tapping it against her thigh.

“That’s rich,” scoffed Diane. “Retards don’t know what they’re doing. I didn’t feel anything at all.”

That wasn’t surprising. It was her common refrain. It was what kept her coming back. And she needed that immediate condescension as much as she needed her magic from the man on the stage. It solidified the neurotic loop, keeping the reins in Diane’s hands. She was now above them all, this pliant mass of supplicants, looking down from her haughty perch. But the way her eyes moved from worshipper to worshipper, from the members of the band to the stage and the man shuddering as Biddle placed his hand on him, to Milt the doorman and the women in the front row, she looked almost…

“God’s peace is with him, my friends,” Biddle said of the shuddering man, now grinning, and rising from his knees.

…nervous. This time
was
different. She feared whatever it was that moved those people, feared that it might make its way into her. So she quickened her step, pushing past worshippers, her eyes only on the church’s front doors. Wendell dragged behind, trying to be his mother’s anchor, but failing as she bumped her way towards the doors. It was almost unreal, he thought, this splinter of light in a shadowed city, this certainty amidst confusion. It hadn’t given into the city, hadn’t been darkened by it, as his family had.

“I think I feel it.”

“No you don’t. Nothing to feel,” she said to him. Her voice now revealed more than just anxiety. They made it to the doors and Diane shoved one open with her shoulder.

Outside, the sun had set on the uneven city horizon. Across the street the strip club had its own line forming at its doors. Purple neon women, lines of running lights, doors that belched a throbbing base beat. Diane stopped to button her coat, and Wendell watched the line across the street, the men speaking into raised coat collars, smoking cigarettes and shifting their weight from foot to foot eagerly. Their doorman was massive, and in his gray suit he looked like a concrete column poured into the sidewalk. Behind him Wendell heard the church’s band, muffled but still ebullient.

“Time to go.”

“Could we stay? Just this once?”

“No. No reason. Folks’re getting crazy eyes in there.”

“But we could—”

“You’ve got school.”

“No I don’t.”

“Then you’ve got cleaning.” She took his hand and moved down the sidewalk. On their side of the street there were few pedestrians, save for an ambling wino, his right side seemingly heavier than his left, pushing his gait towards the street. Diane and Wendell sidestepped him, and made their way to the intersection at the end of the block.

They waited for the light, and Wendell tried tapping one of the drum’s rhythms with his foot, needing something from that night to keep. The apartment would be dark and silent, the walls would begin to breathe, and his mother, in communion with none but her own mind, would pace her room like a condemned criminal. Wendell needed something immovable, something that the assembly offered, a remnant he could possess.

The light changed, the two of them crossed, and the street lights like ghost eyes lit their way.

New Faith Healing Assembly really did have excellent sandwiches, he remembered. They were enough to prompt even his mother to stay for an entire service a few times. The Church of the Holy Spirit of Grace and Truth would only, at times, put out pre-service wafer cookies like pressboard and lines of plastic cups holding orange bug juice. Wendell walked down the sidewalk on Mortimer Street, favoring his right foot, remembering New Faith and an acned blonde woman with a funhouse face setting the cold cuts platters out after one of the services, smiling with such energy that little Wendell thought her lips would burst. That funhouse face, he recalled, a testament to how the run-down bar-turned-church took all comers, no matter their peculiarities. Wendell thought about those platters, and how he folded the pieces of ham in half, stacking them up against each other on the sourdough like little pink waves, dotted the tops with mustard, put the sourdough roof on his house, and jammed it into his cheeks like a squirrel.

The ham,
he thought,
the roast beef, salami, those platters like giant sundials, full of that luscious meat, dripping with…

“Stop it,” he told himself. Wendell quickened his step. The yellow awnings ahead of him grew.

Brewster’s Market was where his mother always shopped—before becoming a self-imposed shut-in. After that, and before he moved out of the apartment, Wendell would trek down to Brewster’s and wheel the bags back in her fold-up shopping cart. Small and tidy, Wendell remembered the rows of apples and pears, dried dates like leathery brown eggs, the forests of broccoli and cauliflower, and the bundles of jerky on the counter in glass jars. On the wall behind the register was the necessary small businessman’s Medal of Honor, the framed First Dollar Earned. Bundles of fresh carrots tied together at the stalks hung from the poles at the end of each aisle, and small fans whirred at the top of each pole to keep the warm air from getting stagnant. The entire store was festooned with lines of garlic like Christmas lights. Some of the neighborhood kids used to tempt fate by stealing handfuls of tomatoes to throw at each other from opposite sides of the street. Mr. Brewster, long in the tooth but quick with his broom—a giant implement for a giant man, more a log with bristles than a broom—would chase the children down the block until giving up and returning under a cloud of profanities. Mr. Brewster was long gone, replaced by his son, who saw the city’s decline, read the handwriting on the wall, and sold the family business to a Pakistani family willing to breathe some extra life into it. Still with its original name even though all remaining Brewsters were off in the suburbs, it still looked as it had when Wendell was young. And now it was only one block down; Wendell saw the stacks of oranges. In two minutes they would be in his hands.

“I’m already a killer,” he whispered, “so what’s a little shoplifting?” Wrong, yes, but there was no nagging nun on Mortimer Street. Plus, he saw no other options. He needed to eat. And fruit was better than what his mind was conjuring up.

From where he was, approaching the market slowly, Wendell saw one of the employees, his back turned to him, sweeping the sidewalk. Even on his broken feet, he could grab a few oranges and be down to the corner before anyone turned.

Quickly, just don’t make a scene
.

Wendell moved towards the market, seeing no customers inside or out. He scanned his surroundings, looking for eyes turned his way. Out of a whole pile of oranges, two or three wouldn’t be missed. The sweeping clerk wouldn’t care. The Pakistanis wouldn’t care.

Across the street was the Mortimer Cinema, where Wendell’s father had taken him after their first week in the city to watch cartoon cats battle cartoon dogs and eat popcorn so salty his lips cracked. Above the front doors was the theater marquee, with the word Mortimer in neon letters descending in a vertical column into the marquees’ top. Swirls of gold and lines of holes where glass bulbs were meant to go lined the marquee, which now held the words UNDER NEW MANAGEME. A solitary N hung for dear life at the bottom; the T must have been long gone. On the decline even when Wendell was young, the cinema was now dead, but just didn’t know it yet. The poster displays out front were either broken or held faded posters of women in slinky lingerie pouting their lips. The ticket stand was empty, but next to it was a man, leaning against it and staring out across the street.

Staring at Wendell.

No, he’s looking at something else, not at…

The man walked to his right and leaned against a mailbox painted with bird droppings like abstract art. He coughed into his fist.

Not coughing. He’s talking, into a mike in his hand…

He raised his eyes and again looked at Wendell. It
had
to be at Wendell.

He sees me.

The man had a wiry sponge of hair covered in a gray knit cap, with a thick beard covering all but eyes and a bulbous nose. On any normal day he would just be another homeless loser on the street, searching garbage cans for recyclables or bumming smokes off pedestrians. On any normal day. But the world was off its axis, the earth was swallowing the city, and Wendell was seeing first hand a new world emerge. Normal was gone. So Wendell stared back, knowing but not caring that staring would bring it all to a new level.

The man flipped his hand over to reveal a cigarette as if it were a magic trick, lit it and put it to his lips. With his other hand he scratched at the hair sticking out from his knit cap.

That cap
, Wendell thought.
Yes, I knew it.

The Corner Pocket Lounge, two days earlier. It had been raining. A man, stumbling down the sidewalk, and clearly a good actor. He had been following Wendell all along. This was no homeless man. Even that bird’s nest homeless man beard was too obvious.

Fake. Fake hair, fake nose. All of it.

The man would shuffle his feet, fish for something in his pocket, or adjust his cap, all while dropping his glance and then returning it to Wendell.

“Walk away,” Wendell whispered.
Something’s in that pocket of his
, he thought. He pulled his trench coat collar up and turned towards the market. Wendell reached Brewster’s, picked his way through the tables and crates on display on the sidewalk, thinking nothing of oranges. He kept his eyes pointed to Mortimer Street so that he could keep the man in his periphery; he was now walking a few paces behind Wendell on the other side of the street. Wendell slowed, and the man slowed. A horn blared in the street, and Wendell took it as a starting pistol, quickening his pace, knowing toes were breaking in his sneakers. The man followed.

Mortimer intersected with Greenfield Street at the light. Wendell turned left sharply and kept up his pace. Greenfield was empty of all traffic, all people, silent, like it was sleeping.

Echoes. Behind him. With the naked street and the concrete brownstones, the footsteps swelled in Wendell’s ears. His throat tightened.

Just keep going, just don’t stop
, Wendell thought, trying to convince himself of the best option,
just run, find a public place. Just don’t let it happen, don’t let him…

And then came a devilish thought: stop and face him.

Yes, stop. You know you want to.