Big Machine (11 page)

A feast, I thought. Where you toast and ask the Heavens for luck.

“We should have it at my cabin,” I told him.

“Well, where else we going to do it?” Peach Tree asked. “You think I’m going to clean up my place for you?”

Euphinia said, “We should all bring something.”

Each Unlikely Scholar shook my hand and left.

I stood still for twenty minutes more.

With the rest of my afternoon I went over Gartrelle Meadows’s file again, the sound on the stairs.
Electricity. Electricity
. I felt a bit of that myself. The next morning it would be my turn. At four o’clock I sent the last report of my life up to the Dean.

Then I borrowed a truck, drove up to Newport, and spent most of my money on a treat for the feast.

AS I CLEANED MY CABIN
, a great wind bruised the walls. It made a steady stomp against the roof and threw snow at all my windows. Winter in Vermont. I already knew it well.

At seven the Unlikely Scholars arrived together.

Carrying dishes of this and that, the same old stuff as always, but it didn’t look the same. Even a bowl of mashed potatoes became whipped ambrosia.

We had a tuna casserole, homemade buttermilk biscuits, sweet potatoes, and even lobsters. A wild mix of food, right? But it seemed appropriate. We were a wild mix of people. Most of us were missing a couple of teeth somewhere in our mouths. Our fingertips showed scars and hardened skin from the years of cradling hot glass pipes. We bumped around one another, elbows and hips, as we set the table. But there wasn’t as much chatter as I remembered from months before.

When we finally sat for the meal, it felt like a wake. Knives and forks clacking, cups thumping as they were set back down on the dining table. Our utensils were louder than us. We ate like that until our plates were clean.

Before anyone considered seconds, I left the room. When I returned from the bedroom, the other Unlikely Scholars eyed me cautiously. But I didn’t want them watching me so I shook what was in my hands.

We’d been there nine months. Nine months of water and juice, tea and coffee, all the soda you might like. But not this. Not one glass of wine. From the hush you would’ve thought I’d just returned from the top
of Mount Sinai. I shook the bags, full of reds, again. They were as heavy as stone tablets.

“Ricky,” Violet whispered. “Everything’s forgiven.”

TWO HOURS LATER
and we were singing at the table. Humming at least. Peach Tree doing a little Al Green while I tapped my chair to give him a beat, but I was thinking of the wrong song and messed him up. He got angry, just a flare-up, a minute of shouting that passed. None of us held it against him.

We were down to the last two bottles of Shiraz. Most of the food gone. I’ll say this about us. We looked silly.

Each of us wore these fine Washburn outfits. Verdelle a two-piece twill cord “tailleur” suit, and Peach Tree a herringbone tweed three-piece. Sunny came in a men’s gray worsted wool suit and hadn’t removed her jacket throughout the meal. Euphinia and Grace wore matching evening gowns of chenille brocaded crêpe. And Violet looked almost sporty in a three-piece knickers suit. And yet, with all this finery, we looked a little foolish because we’d tucked paper towels into our collars like bibs.

And I don’t mean one paper towel either. I’m talking about three or four, hanging down to our waists. You’d have thought we were in barber’s chairs. But what else were we going to do? I’m not the only one who thought the Library might ask us to return the duds one day. And I did not want to get charged on some cleaning fee.

I uncorked the last two bottles and moved around the table, a bit wobbly. I poured out generous doses, then returned to my seat. The kitchen clock read ten past ten, but it felt later. Liquor turns some folks giddy, while others get aggressive. And it makes some people reminisce.

Euphinia said, “I got caught up in some trouble down in Victoria, Texas, two years ago. Did an account takeover on a couple, the easiest kind of ID theft. But I guess they lost their house over the debts. By the time I got caught, they were living out of their car. They tracked me down on the morning I made bail.”

She sipped her wine.

“I had my money tucked in a bank in Houston, so I stepped out my arraignment at the Victoria County Courthouse and got right on Route 59. I figured I’d close out the account in Houston, then disappear. Had to go do it in person because no ATM spits out that much cash. I’m not on the road more than a few miles when this couple I’d cheated rolls up alongside me. I didn’t know them, never saw their faces before, but I could tell they knew who I was. I was the Devil, as far as they were concerned.”

We were so used to snowstorms by this time that we hardly flinched when my cabin’s windows rattled. Outside, it sounded as if the woods themselves were running headfirst into my house. The walls groaned from another tackle.

Euphinia said, “It’s not the first time I got found. I pulled onto the shoulder, and they stopped just ahead. I’d offer them some money if they’d follow me to Houston, just enough to make us even. They climbed out the car, this Mexican couple, calm as clams. I rolled down my window to talk, and before I even open my mouth, that man lifts the lock and opens my door. Pushes right inside! So I scramble to the passenger side, best I could, but there’s the wife. She’s blocking the door with her hip. And while I’m looking at her, the man punches me in the back of the head. Kept hitting me until I just passed out.”

Euphinia stopped and sighed, dropped her chin to her chest. She spoke quietly now.

“You ever been in the south Texas desert? I smelled salt water coming up from the gulf, but I saw desert scrub and twisted acacia. It was like my nose and eyes weren’t in the same territory. I got confused. And then this heat, this dry, dry heat. That couple dumped me and ran. I didn’t see them. No cars. I found tire tracks and tried to follow them, but pretty soon I couldn’t see straight. I was just wandering to death.

“Then I look up and I see all these
birds
, different kinds, circling and circling a spot up ahead. I figured that meant water. By the time I got there, I was practically crawling. I didn’t have much strength. And when I got there, the birds didn’t even scatter like birds do. They kept circling, or they perched in the brush and they watched me stagger. They kept chirping. All of them. So many, and so loud, I covered my ears. And finally I found a deep ditch, but there wasn’t any water in it. There was a body, lying on its back. It was my own grandson.”

Euphinia’s hand sat on the table, clenched into a fist. Grace set down her wineglass and rested her open hand over Euphinia’s knuckles until the fingers uncurled, lay flat again.

“I tried to run, but I didn’t have the power. I kneeled at the edge of the ditch trying to understand what I was seeing. My nine-year-old grandson—Trevor Lee, we called him—was lying in that ditch. Wearing the suit we buried him in. I figured this was a delusion. Hallucinating from the thirst. So I was able to stay calm. But then that boy opened his eyes.

“He looked right at me, started moving his lips, and I
knew
what he was saying. I fell right into the ditch, dragged myself to him, and I touched his legs. His body was
real
. I crawled up to his side and watched his lips moving. I heard him say it was my fault he died. And I cried because I knew he was right.

“I put my hands over my baby boy’s mouth. I felt his lips brush against my palms. He wouldn’t stop damning me. So finally I gave up, I dropped my hands. I leaned over Trevor Lee’s body. It was time to reckon with the way I’d lived my life. I put my mouth to Trevor Lee’s ear and I made my promise.

“As soon as I did, all those birds stopping singing. They flew right away. Their wings sounded like a thunder cloud. Seconds later a heavy rain started. And that’s what saved my life. I wandered out the desert. Two years later, I’m sitting here.”

I raised my glass. “To keeping our promises,” I said quietly.

“Amen to that,” Sunny said, knocking the table with one hand.

Everyone sipped from their cups.

“And to Gartrelle Meadows,” I added.

Why did I mention him? Of all the things I might have said next? He must’ve sat through a moment just like this. The night before the Dean’s door opened. And maybe Euphinia’s story would’ve sounded as familiar to him as it did to me. To us. To all the Unlikely Scholars.

Peach Tree raised his glass and sniffed. “To Audrey Green.”

Each of us raised a cup and chanted the name of a Scholar we’d come across in the Library’s files. They’d become a little mythic to us.

Finally Grace said, “To the Gray Lady.”

“Adele Henry?” I asked.

“Even her,” Euphinia said.

We’d actually set out eight places at the table, on the off chance she might show. I’d slipped a note under her cabin door, for nothing. We gestured toward her empty chair.

“And to Solomon Clay.” I saved his name for last.

I rose from the table after that and returned to my bedroom. Got on my knees and dug for the last bag, hidden underneath my bed. The others swayed in their seats. When I returned, I carried one last bottle.

“It’s time for the bourbon,” I said.

Everyone hopped up to wash out their glasses.

AND YET
, for all that drinking, I couldn’t fall asleep.

I sent the other Scholars home by two in the morning and spent the next hours uneasy. First, I drank a few gallons of water so I wouldn’t have a hangover. Then I lay on the couch trying to trick myself into dozing. Posing like a sleeper: shoes off, body scrunched onto the cushions, eyes closed, mouth open, a pillow under my narrow head, but my body wouldn’t buy it, and after an hour I sat up. What would I do with all this time? I felt so nervous that I could hardly sit down. By dawn, I’m sorry to say, I’d torn my cabin apart trying to find my dope.

But now I couldn’t find the damn things! I’d hidden them too well. I’d wrapped them in tin foil, I remembered that much, then thrown the tin foil into a Ziploc bag. But what had I done after that? I checked behind the toilet again. In the butter dish. The oven. I’d started out moving my stash every week, but eventually I only needed to relocate it once a month. The Library’s work became my habit instead.

For all I knew, I’d buried the stuff outside over the summer, maybe next to my front steps. If so, I wouldn’t be able to dig it out of the frozen earth now. I checked behind the radiators and even in my overhead lamps. I looked and looked and looked.

When the sun rose, I didn’t recognize my cabin. I’d kept it so neat all nine months before this. Had my friends snuck a hurricane inside while I was using the bathroom? Who’d torn open the couch cushions and pulled out every kitchen drawer? Not me. I felt sick and silly to see so much damage, but at least the time had passed. Nearly seven in the
morning now, and I felt grateful for that. Spent forty-five minutes putting everything away and suddenly my meeting with the Dean seemed too near. I had to hurry into the shower. Before getting in I finally found the dope, six baggies stuffed into one of the toilet rolls under the bathroom sink. Too late to shoot up now, but I didn’t throw them out either. As the water ran in the tub, I left them right on top of my pillowcase. Then I washed and dressed. Put on my finest outfit, a three-button charcoal pin-striped suit.

I left the cabin, and as I tramped toward the Library, I saw Violet watching me from her cabin. I waved, but she didn’t wave back. She watched me for another moment, then let the curtain swing closed.

The sun had risen high enough for me to see all the cabins. With their lights off it seemed as if they’d shut their eyes to me. I moved toward the Library alone.

Before I went inside, three wild turkeys appeared in the snow. Their bald heads bopped up and down as they walked. With a clumsy dash they leapt onto the roof of my cabin. They searched for food up there and found nothing and I watched them. Until they hopped down again and beat a graceless retreat into the woods.

Imagine me seeing a thing like that in a place like this. There are people who say life is dull. Just a series of mundane events. But I can’t agree. Things happen. Bet on that.

I MADE IT TO MY OFFICE
, but my office wasn’t there. The basics were still in place, like a desk and file cabinet, but my work had been removed. Every last clip, even notes scribbled onto index cards. The only thing left was a small picture I had kept tucked in the top drawer of my desk. Me and my sister, Daphne. A shot from our childhood. The two of us on our living room couch. Daphne’s five, and I’m only six months old and totally naked. I look like a big old Junior Mint in her arms.

“Mr. Rice.”

I looked up and saw that Lake, the enormous bastard, had snuck up on me again.

“You’re pretty quiet for a big guy.”

“Don’t be nervous,” Lake said.

“I’m not.”

I said this, but when I tried to stand, I couldn’t do it. My mind gave two commands: get up, and put that picture in your pocket, but I didn’t manage either one. When I tried to stand, my hand shook and the photo of Daphne slipped out of my fingers, into my lap. And my legs didn’t respond except to quiver.

“Don’t be nervous,” Lake said again, but this time he walked into the office and his colossal head blotted out the lightbulb. He lifted me out of the chair by pulling on my arm, and then, just as casually, picked Daphne’s photo up from the ground. He undid my jacket and slid the shot into my pocket. Then he redid the button.

“Do I look okay?” I finally asked.

But he didn’t answer me. What was he going to do, fix my tie? Darn my socks? The man wasn’t my personal valet. He left the office.

Whenever I’d gone off heroin before, the people who loved me had praised the change excessively. I mean they’d really cheer me on. But was it really my only success? You wouldn’t have known it by the look of me back then, but I always worked. Even when I stole and scammed and pulled knives on junior high school children, I still showed up for my shift at the movie theater, the restaurant, the bookstore. I took some pride in that, but it’s a small victory, I guess. Certainly nobody else ever noticed.