This Magnificent Desolation (32 page)

The wheels bang the rails beneath them in a slow, sleepy cadence. Warm air sighs above. The fluttering tarp shows black and then cloudless, high blue sky.

Duncan, I didn't want to really hurt that man. You know that, right?

He is hungry. Saliva rises up in his mouth, wet anticipation. Between bites of bread and beans he looks at her.

Mother nods. Okay. You're right, I did want to hurt him. Damn right I did. That man was just waiting to hurt us. I'd like to say that I'm thankful that he's all right, but you know, sweetie, I'm not thankful and I am glad I hurt him. I only wish the bastard wasn't getting back off the ground.

There are some people in this world that will hurt you without blinking an eye. You have to look out for these kinds of people, and when you see them, you have to hurt them before they can hurt you. Do you understand?

This is what Joshua has told him, but he doesn't tell her this. Mother chews her bread, the rails clatters beneath them, and Duncan lays his head back upon his duffel bag, listens to the sound of her. Above them, the rippling black cables of telephone lines stretch, an undulating merging and intersecting that seems to vibrate and hum with her voice.

With some one like that, you can't take any chances.

I'm sorry I got us into this. I just wanted us to have an adventure together.

I can't believe I let us jump a train. What the hell was I thinking?

If Joshua had been here, he would have known what to do.

I almost killed a man.

Goddamn hobo.

And then she shakes her head in disbelief and laughs: Did you see
the way he hit those rails and jumped up like a goddamn jack-in-the-box?

And then she sighs.

My. God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

By the time they arrive back in San Francisco the night has lengthened and become cold, and when it begins to rain, large haillike drops bouncing loudly on the metal, they huddle against each other. And Duncan is glad that mother, distracted by her efforts to get warm, has forgotten all about Spider's fifth of Jack.

The rail cars slow as they pass through the center of the city, and together they look over the rim of the dump car at the houses along Main Street. Mother's breath is warm and comforting against the side of his face. Trucks and flatbeds and rusted cars bump and bang and hiss through the rain up and down Belmont. A traffic light thumps and clicks, flickers red at intervals and the traffic waits and then moves on again. No one seems in a hurry and the frequency of the light's changing might be the same as it was two decades before. An old pharmacy sign glows blue in a white-framed window. Duncan can see men sitting on stools and drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, reading newspapers, and staring out at the
strange fogged-steamed night. Through the mist their figures look numb and vague, as if they are merely the memory, the afterprint or shade of old men who have long since passed. A barge sounds out in the bay, and farther north, toward Calistas, a horn bellows deep and low in response.

Mother's face is bright and wet, scoured young by the rain. We made it, she says, and takes Duncan's hand, and squeezes hard.

It's a little after eight thirty and the large oval clock over the pharmacist's shuttered counter knocks loudly, even over the sound of Charlie Pride. Maggie drinks cup after cup of coffee and stares out through the plate glass, her face caught in the glow of neon blue. Every once in a while she purses her lips and wipes at the condensation that has formed there, squints out onto the black, gleaming street. Duncan has read most of the comics in the magazine rack when she stirs, her mouth opening and then spreading into a smile.

C'mon, she says. Joshua's here.

Outside, across the street, is an idling wrecker with the words
Joe's Auto and Tow
painted in elaborate but faded script across the rusted metal. Sitting in the cab, Joshua is waiting for them, his steam fogging the windows. Wipers clack back and forth across a cracked windshield. Cigarette smoke curls white and lazy from the half-opened window. Music sounds softly from the truck's radio, and then is broken by a DJ's animated voice.

Joshua! Maggie says as she opens the door and then slides across the bench seat to hug him, lays her head against him for a moment, and then is sitting up and wiping at her eyes.

Maggie, Joshua says, and then: Duncan. You okay, kid?

Duncan looks to Joshua and nods, and Joshua throws his cigarette butt out into the night. He glares balefully through the steamed glass to the fog-swirling street.

You can't keep doing this to him, Maggie, he says softly, and he
might have been referring to anything. You know that. It's got to stop.

He keeps his eyes on the road, lets the words sink in. Maggie's jaws grind in the shadows of the cab; Duncan can feel her tension, like something simmering, and then before it boils over, she sighs and all the tension is suddenly gone.

Yes. I know, she says. I'm sorry. I—I guess don't know what I'm doing.

It's okay, baby. It's okay. You're home and you're both safe now.

We are?

Of course you are.

Joshua mashes the clutch, wrestles with the gearshift, and then they are moving again.

Maggie stares at Joshua as he drives, rain shadow passing crookedly down his rigid face, and finally seems to risk speaking: Do you have anything, honey? A little something in the glove compartment to take the edge off? You wouldn't believe what we've been through.

Shit, Maggie.

She rummages in her bag and laughs victoriously when she pulls out Spider's fifth. Joshua glances at her as she unscrews the top.

Where'd you get that?

Some hobo on the train, nasty piece of work, but Duncan and I showed him, didn't we, sweetie?

Duncan remains silent, stares at the streets passing blurred before them.

Joshua reaches out a hand. Can I see it?

Sure, honey, one minute. She swigs deeply from the bottle and sighs as she hands it to him.

Joshua rolls down his window, takes the bottle, and throws it out into the night. A moment later they hear it smashing upon the road. He shakes his head. You drinking from the same bottle as a goddamn hobo? How low can you get, woman?

Maggie opens her mouth and then closes it again, stares blankly through the windshield.
A goddamn hobo.

I'm a good mother, Maggie says. I've always tried to be a good mother.

Of course you are, baby. Everyone knows that. I'm just saying you've got to watch the other stuff.

The truck's wipers wheeze back and forth and the headlights shudder and the truck bounces and rattles along, the tow chain banging and the swing arm groaning from the rear. Joshua fiddles with the radio but all that comes is static and eventually he switches it off, lights another cigarette, and shares it with Mother. Duncan stares at the headlights floating misshapen in the black like two oyster shells. He can barely make out the streets through the rain. A mile passes and then two, and although Mother is silent, he can feel the tension of her, or perhaps it is anxiety or fear, building, and he tries to gauge her expression but her face is lost in the shadows of the cab.

Est evacuatio timoris propter confirniationem liberi arbitrii, qua deinceps scit se peccare non posse.
Fear is cast out because of the strengthening of the will by which the soul knows it can no longer sin.

—ST. BONAVENTURE, ON FEAR IN PURGATORY

March 1985

Men's faces greasy with condensation shimmer in the pitch-black of the tunnel. Beneath his hard hat Joshua's hair is slick and wet. Sweat trickles down the men's backs, in the folds between clothes and their rain gear. Mold grows in the creases of their skin, in the warmth of their armpits, between fingers and toes, in their crotches, in the tender places about their ears, and their skin begins to rot. But Joshua has experienced this before many thousands of miles away. And this is not the only thing that reminds him of other places.

From cross-sections and secondary tunnels—ventilation shafts
and sluice breaks—men appear suddenly, faces peering out of the dripping darkness, and he cannot tell who they are until they mutter their name: Javier, Sully, John Chang, P.J. Rollins, Billy Gillespie. And the hollow, eternal sound of water droplets falling and reverberating through the tunnel as if they are at the bottom of some abyssal well.

Eyes glisten from pale and gaunt washed-out faces like hard gems in the gloom, like the backs of darkling beetles. And some eyes bleed from their whites, as nitrogen-starved corpuscles explode. Or stepping from pillars of steam: black, shifting figures like the soldiers that move through the misty jungles of his dreams, moving seemingly without end, much like the workers of this tunnel—and always they are following him, always searching for a way to move up, up into the light.

And always the deep, falling, cavernous sound of raindrops, dropping from the walls into holes and cracks and pools about them and echoing like minor concussions enlarging and then diminishing, settling back into the earth and creating the suggestion of vastness, of a free-falling dark without end. And in this dark, faintly, Joshua hears Jamie Minkivitz crying and his brother telling him to stop, pleading with him for the love of God to just shut the fuck up.

Every night from the Vulcanite radio the same message repeats itself like a looped recorded broadcast from some indeterminable source: the moment of the lunar landing and then the tragic hours before the
Eagle
's scheduled return to orbit with the command module and before its ill-fated abort. But tonight is different. Duncan turns the radio's knob past Radio Luxembourg to a point on the dial where the needle goes no farther, a channel of static from which, when he listens in the dark, a faint sound begins to emerge, at times a ghostly jumble of voices and at others a crisp enunciation punctuating the charged ether. He hears the voice of Michael Collins, ghostly and insubstantial yet filled with urgency:

Collins to Eagle. Over
.

Collins to Eagle. Over
.

Buzz. Neil. Come back, over
.

Collins to Eagle. Over
.

Houston, are you picking this up on the LVL? I think there's a problem with telemetry between the CM and the LM, over. I can't tell what's happening down there. I'm changing frequency to NasCom, over
.

Now operating on NasCom. Houston? Eagle? Can you hear me?

CM to Houston, do you copy?

Passing into lunar shadow in forty seconds, and counting
.

CM to Houston. Hope to return to radio transmission in two hours, over. Houston, do you copy?

Forty seconds
.

Be great if you guys could get the RCT up and running by the time I've made sequential orbit. It's getting pretty lonely up here without any human voices for company. Over
.

Twenty seconds
.

I'll look for Neil and Buzz on my next pass. Buzz brought his baseball bat. Wanted to see how far in he could hit a baseball in space. [laughs]

Ten seconds
.

I think … [garbled]
.

Out of the dark … [garbled]. Over
.

Collins to control. If you have a moment, say a prayer for all of us, would you? We need everything we can get up here
.

The Hyginus Rille is in sight. Beginning transmission blackout. If you make contact with Neil and Buzz, tell them I was asking for them. Am eager for rendezvous and excited for their return. What a job they've done! See you on the … [garbled]
.

And then it ends and there is only a vacant electrical hum and soft bursts of static as power surges down the line. Duncan reaches out and turns off the radio and the room is dark once more, but when he
lies back in bed, pulls the sheets and blanket to his chin and stares at the ceiling, the deep night of space swirls above him and there are no stars and for the astronauts and his father no promise of dawn and only the never-ever of returning home again.

April 1985

Jamie Minkivitz and the angel climb higher and higher, the moon rises vast and colossal before them, and they are held momentarily in its lambent light, with the darkness of space stretching all about them, and the angel lifts his face and smiles and his eyes are the color of basalt.

Jamie stares into that face, which appears so beatific and strangely illuminescent and charged with the best and most human of qualities—benevolence, empathy, kindness—that he is entranced and captivated by it, held in its divine light as if he were glimpsing some small part of the face of God, and then the face is suddenly transformed.

Now the thing that looks down upon him, even as it pulls him ever skyward, higher and higher so that the wind is ripping the air from his lungs and he can feel the cold knotting his muscles, a cold paralysis seeping down through him like ink, seems absent of anything
human. It stares at him and nothing is reflected in its blank eyes, and then it lets loose its hold and he wonders how he could have mistaken what he'd seen. And even in that moment before it lets go of him and he falls into the darkness, Jamie Minkivitz stares at the fine avian bones of its knuckles and wrists shining white as it squeezes him tighter and tighter so that for one fleeting moment he thinks that his fear is misplaced and that something wondrous is about to happen.

He is six miles up and alone, falling at 120 miles per hour, and in three minutes he will strike the surface of the bay. From pain, cold, and lack of oxygen he is buffeted into unconsciousness. He falls incredibly fast for the first fifteen seconds or so then the air thickens about him—atmospheric drag resisting gravity's acceleration—and his plummet begins to slow. With every foot, he slows even more. He wakes, sputtering into consciousness, at about twenty thousand feet, and vomits. This is the final part of his descent, which will last about two minutes.