Big Machine (16 page)

And yet my father was the one who believed in the Washerwomen most. He convinced my mother—a sixth-grade history teacher when they met—to join. To raise their children in a “cult.” And when my mother and father went out proselytizing, other Christians called them much worse things than cultists. That’s dedication. That’s faith. How could a person like him make such a leap in one way, but in all others remain the model of prudence? As a boy I asked him about this all the time. Why do you follow the Washerwomen? And his answer remained the same: common sense. This was the mystery of Sargent Rice.

But a mystery only satisfies if there’s an answer at the end, and he refused to offer one. He used to hold me close, so close I could see the life behind his eyes, but his soul always scurried off to hide. I’d run my fingers across his cheeks as he read to me, thinking I could pluck at his spirit as easily as an eyelash. But when my fingers got too close, he’d shut his eyelids. Wouldn’t open them again until I dropped my hands into my lap. Even then I understood his irritation. No one wants to get poked like that, but why couldn’t he understand what I was really after? How could a child be wiser than a grown man? Eventually I got exhausted, I’d done too much begging, and I gave up. I felt affection for him, nothing more. Even our mother came to think of him as a reliable friend, that’s all.

For him this realization was slow in coming, though it did finally pop in December of 1971. The Washerwomen didn’t let us celebrate Christmas because of its pagan origins. Just more evidence that the world had fallen into disrepair. You want to talk about a way to make yourself weird in America? Skip Christmas. Jewish kids and Muslim kids know what I’m talking about. Jehovah’s Witnesses too. Where’s your wreath? Your window display? It was just one more thing that put the Washerwomen in a bad light. We didn’t realize it, but our neighbors were making a list.

But in private my family still gave one another little gifts. That’s a hard habit to kick. My dad sat on our living room couch, the one with a cheetah-skin pattern. I was seven and Daphne, twelve. She danced badly, showing our mother a few steps, and I tried to imitate Daphne so our mom would watch me too. Meanwhile Carolyn Rice packed the torn wrapping paper inside old newsprint so the Washerwomen
wouldn’t know we’d traded presents. The other faithful families might’ve been doing the exact same thing, but we couldn’t be sure. And in the midst of this my father reached a pretty obvious conclusion. He’d been watching us quietly for a while. His gift that year? We gave him a pocket mirror. When he unwrapped it, he held it up between two fingers like he was lifting a mouse by its tail.

He coughed once, and I peeked at him. He shook his head faintly. Sargent Rice was as skinny as a lamppost and looked even slimmer on our wide couch.

He said, “This family won’t even visit my grave.”

We turned our backs on Christmas, on public school. On private school and Catholic school too. We weren’t allowed to play with “outside” kids. That’s what we called them. The world had broken, all of it failing fast. The Washerwomen were trying to save as many of us as they could before God’s last bell. My father took this seriously. “You all better be ready,” he’d snarl at Daphne and me every time we talked back or tried having a little fun. You all better be ready. But for what, exactly? He wouldn’t say.

I LEFT THE WOMAN
at the front desk and went back up to my hotel room to put on some finer clothes. When the woman said my visitor had dressed better, I guessed that our target had found me. So much for surprise. This hotel provided no protection, and I already didn’t trust the Gray Lady worth a damn. What could I rely on besides myself? Only the clothes. Wearing them felt like donning armor.

I started with my burgundy sock garters.

In my room I slipped out of the slacks, down to my boxers, and then pulled those sock garters up around my calves. Their contact endowed me with a feeling of renewed elegance and security. I just lounged in my rickety wooden room chair, wishing I had some money left so I could buy breakfast. I’d spent my cash on those newspapers and magazines in New York. But despite a little hunger I felt like a rajah. I didn’t even put the socks on yet, so the garter buckles bounced lightly against my skin when I shifted my legs.

My own family, I don’t want to say we grew up poor, because that wouldn’t be exactly true. We
chose
poverty, made a bit of a vow. We weren’t supposed to pay much attention to material things, though of course that only made my sister and me want them more. This was hard on me, but impossible for Daphne. She wasn’t even allowed ribbons to tie her hair. Those gifts we gave one another for Christmas? Mostly books. Packs of flash cards. (Yay?) A plastic model of the human anatomy. (Our mother quizzed us about the names of organs.) Nothing fun, that’s for damn sure. So we learned to sneak our pleasures up the back stairs.

Daphne, five years older than me, owned a yellow plastic ring that she only dared to wear in the shower. The rest of the time she kept it wrapped in a sock and tucked into one of her old shoes. I knew about it because younger siblings are born detectives. That same Christmas night, when my father came to his lonely revelation, my sister and I had a fight. She wouldn’t stop mocking me for my bad dancing. It was about that, but it wasn’t. We were brother and sister, destined for disputes. So she made fun of me and I showed the yellow plastic ring to my father. I thought he’d yell, maybe take it from her for a month, but he was already in a bad mood. He made Daphne melt the ring in a pan on our stove.

FINALLY
, I decided to put on some gray socks. They stretched and held so nicely once I attached them to the clips of the sock garters. Then it was time for the suit, a gray pin-striped number that flattered my narrow shoulders but still showed off my tight waist. Black Church Chetwynd shoes, and last, my fedora. It had a mulberry-colored band that complemented the burgundy sock garters. Why did this matter? Who would even know they were there, since my pants hid the garters? Me, that’s who. I knew.

I looked at myself in the long mirror that hung on the back of my room’s door, and for a moment I felt sheepish about going outside looking so dandified. This outfit would’ve made my mother blush and my father grumble. They had rules against flashiness, and as I looked at myself, I understood them. You might focus on a man who primps himself, but it can be hard to trust him. When he’s looking deep into your eyes, he may only be checking his reflection. Maybe I should just go back to the slacks and sports jacket, wear the same shirt I’d traveled in.

But no, I wasn’t my parents’ boy anymore and these decisions were mine alone. Funny that I was forty and still needed to remind myself of this.

After I’d dressed, there wasn’t much to do but wait for the call. In that quiet time I pulled out the photo of my sister holding me as a baby. The one I’d dropped when Lake came to get me. I weighed it in my palm. She’s five in the snapshot, which means it was 1965. Ten years later Daphne was murdered.

Eventually the room phone rang.

I reached the lobby once again expecting to find the Gray Lady standing there, but my only greeting was a toot from the Town Car parked out front. That guy in the wheelchair was still in front of the television in the lobby, still shouting at the players on the screen. He was one of those guys who can’t grow a beard, just sprouts patches of desert brush along his neck and chin. He saw me step out of the elevator, and pointed so his friends would look at me.

“I didn’t know this hotel had a maître d,” he said.

The other three men just about burst, laughing at my outfit as I rushed to the front doors. Before I got outside, the two-wheeled entertainer spoke again.

“Table for four!” he yelled.

I was in such a hurry to reach the sidewalk that I almost tripped on the raised doorjamb, and that didn’t help my sense of dignity. Claude stepped out of the car and came around to open the Gray Lady’s door. She hopped out quickly. If she heard those men giggling inside, she didn’t associate it with me. Instead she only waved at Claude, who shut the passenger door, got back in, and drove away.

“We supposed to run after him?” I asked. “ ’Cause I’ve got this bad leg.”

“Claude’s got other business,” she said. “Garland’s a small city. We walk.”

Had she not heard what I’d said? In case she hadn’t, I stood there and pointed at the right leg, but the Gray Lady had trouble seeing my point because she’d already marched a block ahead. I had to scramble to catch up.

San Pablo Avenue, the street we were on, had a booming spirits industry. Bars and liquor stores on every other block, and half-dead homeless people haunting all the corners. These men and women, mostly men, sat on benches or leaned against stores. They stretched and yawned, as if they’d only just been released from their crypts. When we passed them, I looked away.

It was still early, only ten o’clock. We moved fast at first, but got slower because it’s tough to hurry in clothes like ours. Adele wore a knee-length gray checked wool coat, and she cinched the belt just above her waist so the coat looked a bit like a dress. She had on brown leather gloves that matched her brown brogues, and a pair of green knee-length socks. The cloche hat from the day before had been replaced by a brown cap. A bicycling costume, that’s what they called it once. The Gray Lady looked stout, but capable. She moved like she assumed I would follow. And she was right. I did. I felt a little warm in my clothes, but it wasn’t bad.

At one point she looked at me, and I took her attention as my opportunity. There were so many questions I might’ve asked just then, it didn’t really matter which. An answer to just one would’ve satisfied me. But she cut me off before I formed the words.

Ms. Henry said, “The traitor is Solomon Clay.”

I stopped walking and leaned against the side of a liquor store, its red brick hot against my palm. Or did my hand just heat up on its own?

“Mr. Clay?” I whispered. “But he’s …”

Ms. Henry crossed her arms. “He’s what?”

I’d practically memorized this man’s handwriting, raised a toast to him two days before.

“He’s the best,” I said, sounding as certain as I probably ever have.

Ms. Henry spat on the sidewalk. “You’ve never met him, that’s why you can treat him like a god.”

I pushed off the wall. “Have
you
?”

She undid the belt of her jacket and retied it. She looked away from me and down San Pablo Avenue. “Solomon Clay may have been a good Scholar once, but he’s a fanatic now.”

She pointed at me. “And we are going to kill him.”

TURNED OUT
we were going fishing out by the San Francisco Bay. Had a good chance of catching Solomon Clay there. After telling me who the target was, the Gray Lady practically jogged ahead of me. I couldn’t keep up, so I kept my eye on her backside. Which I enjoyed. Soon my knee puffed up under my skin and my shin went frosty cold. I dragged my right foot after me the best I could. I enjoyed that part much less.

We got down to the water to find that the mayor of Garland had decided to hold a press conference right at our destination. He’d drawn an audience.

Garland had a claim on the bit of the Bay that hadn’t already been taken over by San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. Not much left after those three cities took their share, but Garland had built a tiny marina and even a shopping court to capitalize on what remained. They called it Stone Mason Square. The crowd wasn’t huge, but the square wasn’t actually that big. It didn’t take all that many bodies to make it seem full. Seventy-five folks maybe. The Gray Lady looked confused.

“This
is a fly in the ointment,” she said.

“Weren’t expecting a crowd?”

The Gray Lady looked at me with surprise, as if I had just showed up too.

“Claude had reports that Solomon was down here plenty in the last few weeks.”

We got as close to the center of Stone Mason Square as possible, but there were too many people to get far. I couldn’t see past all their heads to the waters of the Bay. The stores of the square formed a perimeter, and the crowd filled the space in between them. I tried to push forward, but the Gray Lady had another idea. She tugged the sleeve of my jacket, just once and just the sleeve, then let go so quickly that my wrist didn’t even graze her fingertips.

Behind us an enormous bookstore had a small café extension that
rose above the throng. It had started filling but wasn’t as tight as the square yet. She went up, and I followed. The Gray Lady shoved through the crowd by using her great green purse as a shield, her forearm braced against one side of the handbag as she bopped the public with the other. A pear-shaped battering ram. People yelped, some shouted, but all of them moved.

Okay, I thought. She’s an asshole.

Once we were up top, pressed against the patio railing, I could see the speaker’s lectern at the head of the crowd. Any one of the dozen men and women milling around up there could’ve been the mayor.

“Why
has Mr. Clay been down here?” I asked.

“Solomon believes the Washburn Library is broken,” the Gray Lady said. “Corrupted. He thinks the solution is to start fresh, start again.”

I pointed down at the square. “Is he going to build a new one here?”

She waved her hand over the crowd. “I was so surprised when we got here because Stone Mason Square is usually pretty empty. Most days it’s just bums, passed out everywhere.”

“Homeless people.”

Ms. Henry nodded. “Solomon Clay is recruiting them.”

To do what? I wondered, but felt scared to ask.

AT THE FRONT
of the crowd an older man approached the lectern.

The mayor played at the microphone, leaning toward it and then away so he could speak with an assistant. His bald scalp glowed red as a lobster’s shell. His thick eyebrows hung over his eyelids. The only strong feature on his face was his arrowhead nose. And he knew it. The mayor gestured with it, poked it at his aides as he spoke. It was the essence of his authority. His ascendancy owed everything to a few ounces of cartilage.