Waking the Dead (46 page)

As soon as I was questioned by a staff member, the once friendly faces of the boys turned suddenly suspicious, as if now that my stock was sinking they needed to disassociate from me.

“Is he expecting you?” asked the staff member.

“I think so.”

“You
think
so?”

“Yes,” I said. “He is.”

“Would you mind saying how you got in here? Do you have a visitor’s pass?”

“No, I don’t. I was in the area and I just came in.”

The staff member nodded. He was satisfied to have proven his point, but he was uncertain where to go from there. I could guess from how he was leaning that he was considering taking me by the arm: his job had made him take the exercise of a certain petty authority for granted. “I think the best way to handle this is for me to bring you to Father Steve,” the staff member said, narrowing his eyes and nodding in a way, I suppose, that was meant to look somehow threatening.

Mileski was surrounded by ten or so boys. A couple of staff members were standing nearby, looking on like secret service agents. One of the boys was saying, “Hey man, but if it’s in my head, it’s in my head, right?”

“There’s a Frank Zappa song,” Mileski answered. “Before your time.”

“I know Zappa, man,” the boy said. He was large, horse-faced, ponytailed.

“Good. Zappa says: ‘What’s the ugliest part of your body? Some say it’s your nose, some say your toes. I say it’s your mind.’” All the boys laughed and Mileski smiled with real pleasure. He reached out and put his hand behind the boy’s head and said, “I knew you’d like that. You look like Zappa anyhow.”

“Excuse me, Father Steve,” said my escort. “Someone’s here who says he’s a friend of yours.”

Mileski turned to face us. I was holding myself rigid, not knowing how he would respond to seeing me. It seemed to take him a moment to fix upon who exactly I was: I was far out of context standing in that iced-in homemade chapel. But then his eyes widened and even through the opaque mesh of his beard I could see his broad smile. “Fielding!” he said, his voice a sonic boom. “Fielding!” He threw his arms out to the side and walked slowly, ceremoniously toward me. I felt rather frail and unsubstantial as I watched his ursine bulk approach me, slowly filling my entire field of vision. And now his arms were around me and he was pressing me into his massive chest. “What a wonderful surprise,” he said. And then, in a much quieter voice, almost a whisper into my ear, he said, “It just breaks my heart, Fielding. But it’s so good to see you.”

I clapped him on the back, like a vanquished wrestler pounding the canvas. “I’ve got to talk to you, Steven. Is there someplace we can go?”

“Sure, definitely. We’ll sit, talk. Just let me finish up here, OK?” He turned back to the boys and staff members, the hard core of his following at Lake Omega. They seemed as if they were used to looking up to him—it was a safe sort of admiration because not one of them was interested in or willing to live his life and so they didn’t really have to compare themselves to him. He was their unicorn. “Well,” he said, facing them and rubbing his hands together, “I guess that about wraps it up.” They smiled understanding smiles. Mileski saluted them and then turned on his heel and threw his arm around my shoulder. “My cabin’s just across the way,” he said. “You can join me for Twinkies and tea.”

His cabin was the size of a small garage. It was painted the same dark pure blue that the farmers in Center chose for their silos. Inside, there was a bed, a table with four wooden chairs, an old shabby carpet, a wicker bookcase. In the center was a potbellied stove with a small stack of split wood and a bucket of kindling next to it. Stuck in one corner was a two-burner gas range that seemed more suitable for a weekend camping trip than an actual domestic life. As soon as we came in, Mileski threw a couple of pieces of wood into the wood stove and then lit the gas range with a match and put on an old cast-iron kettle that was already filled with water. I stood near the door and looked on.

“You know,” he said, crouching down a little so he could see the flame beneath the kettle, “I’ve been sort of expecting you.”

“Why?”

“I got a letter from Tim Stanton. Just two days ago. He told me that you appeared in his church. He didn’t know what to make of it.” Mileski turned and faced me. His smile was so broad, so easy and confident. “He said you seemed very upset, but you couldn’t, wouldn’t, talk about it. He always had a special fondness for you, as you know.”

“No.That never occurred to me.” I gestured toward the chairs and table. “Do you mind?”

“That’s what they’re for,” he said, with a cheerful shrug. He watched me sit down with a curious sort of attention. When I was seated, Mileski strode across the room and sat across from me.

“It sure is good to see you, Fielding. As you see, I’ve been exiled to this little gulag. But. I’m trying to make the most of it. I’m not getting any support at all from the Church. Every two weeks I get a paycheck with the lovely seal of the State of Minnesota on it. All the Church does is allow me to do this. But.Things are changing. I may be able to serve as curate to a pretty interesting pastor in Joliet, Illinois.” He snorted and shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. But after this place, Joliet will feel like the Bahamas.” He ran his massive hand through his thick hair. I wondered momentarily if it was a nervous gesture. “Of course,” he said, “you’ve had a lot of experience sending people to Joliet.”

“How do you mean?”

“In your work. Isn’t that where the prison is? Don’t you have men sent down there in your work?” He furrowed his eyebrows and jutted his chin out, in that slightly humorous way people do when they mean to say, Are you listening to me?

“I’m running for Congress now, Steven.”

He reached across the table and squeezed my shoulder. “That’s wonderful, Fielding! I couldn’t be happier for you.” He nodded his head and squinted. “It’s just like you planned.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

“Father Stanton mentioned nothing about this in his letter. I wonder if he knows. Did you tell him when you saw him?”

“I don’t remember.To be honest with you, I barely remember anything I said to him.”

“What were you doing there? He said it was the middle of the night.”

“Following Sarah. I saw her in a restaurant. I was with some reporters, my campaign manager—”

“Sarah?You mean …
our
Sarah?”

“That’s right. Anyhow, I was sitting there. And I happened to look over and there she was.”

“I’m not getting this. What are you trying to say?”

“Look, Steven. I mean,
Father Steve
. I haven’t had a night’s sleep in … I don’t know how long. I’ve been flying all over the country trying to put this together. I haven’t eaten. OK? I am trying to get this straight. Don’t fuck around with me. Can we at least have that? Do not fuck around with me. It’s too late in the game for that.”

“What game, Fielding?You’re ranting.”

“I know I am. I can hear myself. For pity’s sake, Steven. Help me.”

“I want to help you, Fielding. But what do you want?”The water came to a boil and the kettle began to shudder over the gas jet. Mileski got up and turned off the flame.

“Just stop holding the truth back from me.That’s all over now. It’s just completely over. I want to know everything that happened. And I have to know where she is.”

Mileski folded his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. I had always considered that a signal of an impending falseness. “You want to know where who is?” asked Mileski. “Are you … do you mean Sarah?” The incredulity in his voice lifted me out of my chair. I raised my hands over my head and brought them slamming down onto the table. The table leapt toward me, touching me on the legs. I tossed it onto its side and raced toward Mileski, reaching up and grabbing his throat with my stiff, outstretched fingers.

“Tell me where she is,” I said through my teeth. I felt my own saliva on my chin. Mileski’s hands were on my chest, pushing me back, but for the moment I was too strong for him. Now his hands were on mine, trying to unclasp them from his windpipe. “Where is she?” I screamed into his face.

“With God, Fielding,” he said, choking. He ripped my hands off him and pushed me back hard, sending me stumbling, trying to keep my balance. “You crazy bastard,” he said, rubbing his throat and shaking his head. “What are you trying to do?”

“I just want you to tell me where she is. I know she’s alive. I’ve known it for weeks. Here.” I put my hand over my heart. “And I saw her. And then she called me. She explained the whole thing to me.That it was Seny in the car. But then we were cut off before she could tell me where she is. And you see I have to find her.”

“You don’t get it, do you, Fielding. You never have. If what you’re saying is true. If she is alive. And if I was aware of it, in on the plot, then why would I ever tell you about it? You were never really a part of what we were doing. You didn’t understand it. It seemed—I don’t know.
Inconvenient
. You mostly cared that someone might associate you with us. You felt only fear, Fielding. And you bred it in others. You wanted to take her confidence away. You tried to wedge your ego needs between her soul and her faith.You had no idea what she was.”

“I love her.”

“That doesn’t give you a special claim. So many people loved her.”

“Do you want me to get on my knees and beg you?”

“I think the real question is, Do you want to get on your knees and beg me?”

“You are so secure, Steven,” I said. I moved toward him. He tensed slightly. I forced my body to relax and he relaxed, too. I stepped still closer to him. It was working. “I am much, much smarter than you are.”

“I agree with you there,” said Mileski. “You’re brainy.”

“You believe in resurrections. You believe in miracles. You believe in the fucking Red Sea parting and talking snakes and virgin births. But you haven’t shown the slightest interest or curiosity in what I’ve been telling you here today. And that can mean only one thing.”

“Yeah? What do you think it means?” he said. There was a slight film of huskiness in his voice. He was working too hard to keep his gaze steady.

“It has to mean you knew all along. You know she’s alive. None of this is news to you.
And
you know where she is.” I gave him a moment to respond but when he shook his head no that was all the waiting I could do. I lunged at him with all my desperate and insufficient strength. But he had at least sixty pounds on me and one of his fists was the size of both of mine. He twisted away from me, reared back, and hit me square in the face. There was a moment of wild, scarlet, throbbing pain and then all consciousness was gone like a dragon swallowing its own tail.

15

I
T WAS EITHER
evening or night. I really didn’t know.The sky was black granite when my cab pulled in front of my apartment. I looked up. The lights were on and someone was keeping watch out of the window. The curtain wavered and a human form stepped out of view. When I paid the driver and added an acceptable tip to the fare, I was left with twenty-five cents to my name. It was weirdly exhilarating to be that broke. It made me remember a time in Boston, sixteen or seventeen years before, when I was in college and momentarily without a nighttime job. I had been plunged immediately into absolute pennilessness, as if the entire enterprise of my life was built on ice so thin that it wasn’t really ice at all but more of a cool sheen. And until I got the job as night manager of the pool hall on Central Square (where jug-band musicians played nineball with local Irish hitters) I was reduced to patrolling pay phones in search of forgotten refunds, a degrading but strangely habit-forming enterprise that had me walking ten miles a day through that anemic Boston spring.

As I reached the third-floor landing, the door to my apartment opened up. I saw the wedge of light cast itself against the wall and then into that wedge came the shape of a human shadow. I stopped, holding onto the banister, and waited. I could hear my own heart beating, clanging away like a hammer against a radiator. The head of the shadow turned and then the shadow began to grow, and bend, and then it was indistinct, just a darkness. Whoever it was coming forward, heading toward the railing to look down. I stood there, waiting. I looked down at my shoes. There was a latticework of white snow and salt stain on them. And then I looked up again and saw Caroline’s face peering down at me.

“What happened to you?” she said, her voice a braid of annoyance and compassion.

“I’m all right,” I said. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Now you sound like Danny,” she said. “Well, come on. We’ve been hysterical wondering where you were.”

I came up to the landing and she put her arms around me. She winced as she looked into my face. “You’re bleeding,” she said, touching the whiskery indentation between my lower lip and my chin. “What hit you?”

“A priest,” I said.

“A priest?”

“Who else is in there?” I said, looking at the half-open door to my apartment.

“Tony, Isaac, Juliet, and Dad.”

“Oh Jesus, Caroline. Dad?”

“I’m sorry. Blame yourself, though. I called home, thinking maybe you’d gone there. Then he flipped out and flew out here. He got here two hours ago.” Caroline sensed me about to back up and she caught me by the arm. “Come on. Whatever’s broken, we’ll fix.”

“How is he?”

“Dad? He’s said maybe two words to me. He’s engrossed with Isaac. I think they’re having a competition over who can take credit for the wonder that is Fielding Pierce.” She tugged at me but I resisted and I garnered her close and held on to her with a desperation that hadn’t much to do with what we normally call love.

“It’s falling in on every side, Caroline,” I said. “She’s out there waiting for me.”

“Oh God, Fielding,” she said, holding me close. “You’ve got to stop this. You just have to let it go.”

I shook my head but didn’t say any more. There was very little point after all. We walked into the apartment.

“Tony!” Caroline called out.

At the sound of her voice, Tony came quickly down the narrow hall connecting the living room with the entrance foyer. He looked sloppy, unfocused; he was wearing a black and white T-shirt printed to look somehow like a piano keyboard. He was holding a glass of beer in one hand, a cigar in the other. “Caroline?” he said, with some real urgency, as if in his scheme of things she was always in imminent danger. Then he saw me and stopped. He took a swallow of his beer, a toke off his cigar. “Where the fuck have you been? You made me look like shit.”