The Passage (26 page)

Now he was awake, and though he couldn’t say for sure, he felt like he was down, way down in the hole; he was still bound at the wrists and ankles and probably his waist, too. The room was cold and dark, but he could see lights blinking somewhere, he couldn’t tell how far, and hear the sound of a fan blowing air. He couldn’t remember much of the conversation he’d had with the men before they’d brought him down. They’d weighed him, Carter remembered that, and done other things like any doctor would do, taking his blood pressure and asking him to pee in a cup and tapping his knees with the hammer and peering inside his nose and mouth. Then they’d put the tube in the back of his hand—that hurt, that hurt like hell, he remembered saying so,
God damn
—and hooked the tube up to the bag on the hanger, and the rest was all a blur. He recalled a funny light, glowing bright red on the tip of a pen, and all the faces around him suddenly wearing masks, one of them saying, though he couldn’t tell which one, “This is just the laser, Mr. Carter. You may feel a little pressure.” Now, in the dark, he remembered thinking, before his brain had gone all watery and far away, that God had played one last joke on him and maybe this was his ride to the needle after all. He’d wondered if he’d be seeing Jesus soon or Mrs. Wood or the Devil his own self.

But he hadn’t died, all he’d done was sleep, though he didn’t know how long. His mind had drifted for a while, out of one kind of darkness and into another, like he was walking through a house without lights; and with nothing to look at now, he had no way to get his bearings. He couldn’t tell up from down. He hurt all over and his tongue felt like a balled-up sock in his mouth, or some strange furry animal, burrowing there. The back of his neck, where it met his shoulder blades, was humming with pain. He lifted his head to look around, but all he could see were some little points of light—red lights, like the one on the pen. He couldn’t tell how far away they were or how big. They could have been the lights of a distant city for all he knew.

Wolgast: the name floated up to his mind out of the darkness. Something about Wolgast, that thing he’d said, about time being like an ocean and his to give.
I can give you all the time in the world, Anthony. An ocean of time
. Like he knew what was in the deepest place of Carter’s heart, like they hadn’t just met but had known each other for years. Nobody had talked to Anthony like that for as long as he could remember.

It made him think of the day that had started it all, like the two were of a piece. June: it was June; he remembered that. June, the air under the freeway sizzling hot, and Carter, standing in a wedge of dirty shade and holding his cardboard sign over his chest—
HUNGRY, ANYTHING WILL HELP, GOD BLESS YOU
—had watched as the car, a black Denali, drew up to the curb. The passenger window opened: not just the usual crack, so whoever was inside could pass him a few coins or a folded bill without their fingers even touching his, but gliding all the way down in a single, liquid motion, so that Carter’s reflection in the window’s dark tint fell like a curtain in reverse—like a hole had opened in the world, revealing a secret room within. The hour was just noon, the lunchtime traffic building on the surface roads and on the West Loop, which banged in a tight rhythm over his head, like a long clicking line of freight cars.

“Hello?” the driver was calling. A woman’s voice, straining over the roar of cars and the echoing acoustics under the freeway. “Hello there? Sir! Excuse me, sir!”

As he stepped forward to the open window, Carter could feel the cool air of the inside of the car on his face; could smell the sweet smokiness of new leather and then, closer still, the scent of the woman’s perfume. She was leaning toward the passenger window, her body straining against her seat belt, sunglasses perched on top of her head. A white woman, of course. He’d known that even before he looked. The black Denali with its shining paint job and huge gleaming grille. The eastbound lane on San Felipe, connecting the Galleria with River Oaks, where the big houses were. The woman was young, though, younger than he would have thought for a car like that, thirty at the most, and wearing what looked like tennis clothes, a white skirt and top that matched, her skin moist and shining. Her arms were lean and strong and coppered by the sun. Straight hair, blond with streaks of a darker color, pulled back from the planes of her face, her delicate nose and well-cut cheekbones. No jewelry he could see except a ring, a diamond fat as a tooth. He knew he shouldn’t look any closer, but he couldn’t stop himself; he let his eyes skim through the back of the car. He saw a baby seat, empty, with brightly colored plush toys hanging over it and beside it a large shopping bag that was made of paper but looked like metal. The name of the store, Nordstrom, was written on the bag.

“Whatever you can give,” Carter muttered. “God bless you.”

Her purse, a fat leather satchel, was resting on her lap. She began tossing the contents out onto the seat: a tube of lipstick, an address book, a tiny, jewel-like phone. “I want to give you something,” she was saying. “Would a twenty be enough? Is that what people do? I don’t know.”

“God bless you now.” The light, Carter knew, was about to change. “Whatever you can do.”

She withdrew her wallet just as, behind them, they heard the first impatient honk. The woman turned her head quickly at the sound, then looked up at the traffic signal, now green. “Oh, damnit, damnit.” She was frantically riffling through the wallet, a huge thing the size of a book, with snaps and zippers and compartments crammed with slips of paper. “I don’t know,” she was saying, “I don’t know.”

More honking, and then, with a roar, the vehicle behind her, a red Mercedes, accelerated to jam itself across the middle lane, cutting off an SUV. The driver of the SUV slammed on his brakes and leaned on his horn.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the woman kept saying. She was looking at the wallet like it was a locked door she couldn’t find the key to open. “It’s all
plastic
in here, I thought I had a
twenty
, maybe it was a ten, oh goddamnit,
goddamnit … 
”

“Hey, asshole!” A man leaned his head from the window of a big pickup, two cars back. “Can’t you see the light? Get out of the road!”

“’Sall right,” Anthony said, backing away. “You should go.”

“You heard me?” the man cried. More long blasts of the horn. He waved a bare arm out the window. “Get outta the fucking way!”

The woman arched her back to look into the rearview. Her eyes grew very wide. “Shut up!” she cried bitterly. She hit the steering wheel with her fists. “Jesus, just shut up!”

“Lady, move your fucking car!”

“I wanted to give you something. That’s all I wanted. Why should it be so
hard
, just to do this
one thing
, I wanted to
help … ”

Carter knew it was time to run. He could see how the rest was going to unfold: the car door flying open; the furious footsteps coming toward him; a man’s face pressed close to Carter’s, sneering—
You bothering this lady? What you think you’re doing, fella?
—and then more men, who knew how many, there were always plenty of men when the time came, and no matter what the woman said, she wouldn’t be able to help him, they’d see what they wanted to see: a black man and a white woman with a baby seat and shopping bags, her wallet open in her lap.

“Please,” he said. “Lady, you
got
to go.”

The door of the pickup swung open, disgorging a huge red-faced man in jeans and a T-shirt, with hands big as catcher’s mitts. He’d crush Carter like a bug.

“Hey!” he yelled, pointing. His big round belt buckle gleamed in the sunshine. “You there!”

The woman lifted her eyes to the mirror and saw what Carter did: the man was holding a gun. “Oh my God, oh my God!” she cried.

“He’s carjacking her! That little nigger’s stealing her car!”

Carter was frozen. It was all bearing down on him, a furious roar, the whole world honking and shouting and coming to get him, coming to get him at last. The woman reached quickly across the passenger seat and opened the door.

“Get in!”

Still he couldn’t move.

“Do it!” she shouted. “Get in the car!”

And for some reason, he did. He dropped his sign and got in fast and slammed the door behind him. The woman hit the gas, jumping the light, which had turned from green to red again. Cars swerved all around them as they rocketed through the intersection. For a second Carter thought they were going to crash for sure and closed his eyes tight, bracing himself for the impact. But nothing happened; everybody missed.

It was, he thought, the damnedest thing. They shot out from under the freeway into sunshine again, the woman driving so fast, it was like she’d forgotten he was there. They hit some railroad tracks and the Denali bounced so high he felt his head actually touch the ceiling. It seemed to jar her, too; she hit the brakes, too hard, sending him pitching forward against the dash, then turned the wheel and pulled into a parking lot with a dry cleaner’s and a Shipley Do-Nuts. And without looking at Anthony or saying a word to him, she dropped her head onto the steering wheel and began to cry.

He’d never seen a white woman cry before, not up close, just movies and TV. In the sealed cabin of the Denali, he could smell her tears, like melting wax, and the clean smell of her hair. Then he realized he could smell himself, too, which he hadn’t done in a long time, and the smell was nothing good. It was bad, really bad, like spoiled meat and sour milk, and he looked down at his body, his dirty hands and arms and the same T-shirt and jeans he’d worn for days and days, and felt ashamed.

After some time she lifted her face off the wheel and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “What’s your name?”

“Anthony.”

For a moment, Carter wondered if maybe she was going to drive him straight to the police. The car was so clean and new he felt like a big dirty stain sitting there. But if she could smell him, she didn’t show it any.

“I can get out here,” Carter said. “I’m sorry to have caused you trouble like I did.”

“You? What did
you
do? You didn’t do anything.” She took in a long breath, tilted her head back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. “Jesus, my husband’s going to
kill
me. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Rachel, what were you
thinking?”

She seemed angry, and Carter guessed she was waiting for him to just get out on his own. They were a few blocks north of Richmond; from there he could catch a bus back to the place he’d been sleeping, a vacant lot down on Westpark beside the recycling center. It was a good spot, he’d had no trouble there, and if it rained the people at the center let him sleep in one of the empty garages. He had a little over ten dollars on him, some bills and change from his morning under the 610—enough to get home with, and buy something to eat.

He put his hand on the door.

“No,” she said quickly. “Don’t go.” She turned toward him. Her eyes, puffy from crying, searched his face. “You have to tell me if you meant it.”

Carter drew a blank. “Ma’am?”

“What you wrote on the sign. What you said. ‘God bless you.’ I heard you say it. Because the thing is,” the woman said, not waiting for his answer, “I don’t feel blessed, Anthony.” She gave a haunted laugh, showing a row of tiny, pearl-like teeth. “Isn’t that strange? I should, but I just don’t. I feel awful. I feel awful all the time.”

Carter didn’t know what to say. How could a white lady like her feel awful? In the corner of his eye, he could see the empty baby seat in back, with its bright array of toys, and he wondered where the child was now. Maybe he should say something about her having a baby, how nice that must be for her. Folks liked having babies in his experience, women especially.

“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said. She was staring vacantly out the windshield toward the doughnut shop. “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to say anything. I probably just seem like some crazy woman.”

“You seems all right to me.”

She laughed again, bitterly. “Well that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the thing. I
seem
all right. You can ask anybody. Rachel Wood has everything a person could want. Rachel Wood
seems
perfectly all right … ”

For a minute they just sat there, the woman quietly crying and staring woefully into space, Carter still wondering if he should get out of the car or not. But the lady was upset, and it felt wrong to leave her like that. He wondered if she wanted him to feel sorry for her. Rachel Wood: he guessed that was her name, that she was talking about herself. But he couldn’t say for sure. Maybe Rachel Wood was a friend of hers, or somebody who was looking after the baby. He knew he’d have to go sooner or later. Whatever mood had taken her would pass, and she’d figure out she’d just about gotten herself shot for this smelly nigger who was sitting in her car. But for the moment, the feel of cool air on his face from the dashboard vents and the woman’s strange, sad silence were enough to keep him where he was.

“What’s your last name, Anthony?”

The question wasn’t one he could remember anybody asking him. “Carter,” he said.

What she did next surprised him more than anything that had happened so far. She turned in her seat and, looking right at him with a clear gaze, offered him her hand to shake.

“Well,” she said, her voice still etched with sadness, “how do you do, Mr. Carter. I’m Rachel Wood.”

Mr. Carter: he liked that. Her hand was small but she shook like a man, her grip strong. He felt—but he couldn’t think of the words for it. He watched to see if she’d wipe her hand off, but she made no move to do this.

“Oh my
God!”
Her eyes widened with amazement. “My husband’s going to have a heart attack. You can’t tell him about what happened back there. I mean it. You
absolutely
can’t.”

Carter shook his head.

“I mean, it’s not his fault he’s such a complete and total asshole. He just wouldn’t see it the way we do. You have to promise, Mr. Carter.”