Big Machine (17 page)

Not that the nose worked on everyone. His assistants were charmed, but quite a few people in the crowd jeered. When he turned back to the microphone, they hissed. One lady actually howled. The mayor looked tired. He must’ve wanted the job once, but not anymore.

A camera crew taped the speech while reporters held little recorders.

Back at the Library the Unlikely Scholars pored over newspapers from every state, but could that tall reporter there, for instance, the one whose braids hung below her shoulders, the woman with a lovely smile, could she imagine the value her work held for us? And me now, acting for the benefit of the Dean. The Dean in service to the Washburn Library. The Washburn Library acting on cues sent by the Voice. One long chain. But can a link contemplate its limitations?

Behind the mayor, not more than twenty feet, an enormous blue tarp hung loosely. Covering something, but I couldn’t guess what. A cord ran from one corner of the tarp to the mayor’s right hand. He pulled at it absently as he spoke, and a section of the blue tarp bobbled.

“Hello, everyone,” he began. “Thank you for coming. I can see a lot of upset faces, and I understand that. I really do. This is the last place you expected to see me, isn’t that right?”

The crowd agreed with more hissing and boos and then, strangely, applause.

“Well, sure, you remember when I was accused of forgetting Stone Mason Square. Not just me, but the entire city government. ‘Where’s
our
mayor?’ I remember the graffiti. The activists who held vigils here claimed that all our institutions had failed.”

The mayor stopped to clear his throat and leaned so close to the microphone that his nose brushed the windscreen. He scratched the nose slowly. He tugged the gold cord, and the blue tarp fluttered.

“People used to call this Panhandler Plaza. You could barely park your car before ten guys were at your window asking for change. If you didn’t give them something, they insisted. And they could be
convincing
. Let’s be blunt. People despised them. And eventually people came to despise Stone Mason Square.”

More people jammed onto the patio. Behind me, beside me, right on top of me.

But somehow a zone of protection had been erected around Ms. Henry. I don’t mean that people magically gave the Gray Lady lots of space, there wasn’t that much room to give, just an inch or two on every side of her body. She leaned forward against the rail, her purse safe between the metal and her belly, her arms crossed over her chest, and each hand stuck into the opposing coat sleeve. She even retracted her neck, bringing her head down into the lapels of her jacket. Consciously or not people picked up on her anxiety and gave her the buffer she needed. I thought of a few moments earlier, the way she’d grabbed my coat sleeve but never come in contact with me. I’d been around her two days now and realized I’d never seen her touch anyone.

I, on the other hand, must’ve sent out invitations to nest in my pockets. These people were all up in my zip code. The guy on my right had become my conjoined twin. But you know what? I didn’t mind. As I scanned the square looking for Solomon Clay, a man I wouldn’t recognize except by some aura, I took comfort in the contact of human beings.

The mayor said, “But now here we are. Will we stick around for only one afternoon, then just return it to them? Or can we reclaim this space? Make it
ours
again.”

Now the mayor tugged the gold cord hard enough that the blue tarp swept away.

A pair of brass gates were revealed behind him. They looked fit for a
driveway instead of a dock. A circular plaque dotted the double gates, half the plaque on one gate and half on the other. Together they bore the image of a great, gnarled tree. Garland’s crest, no doubt.

A banner hanging on the gates read
WELCOME HOME
.

The mayor said, “Ferry service has served our neighbors in Oakland and Alameda quite well, bringing much needed tourist interest as well as an easier way for local residents to reach their jobs in San Francisco.

“When I became your mayor, I promised that I would work to make sure Garland shared in this prosperity. Well, these gates mark the future site of the Garland Ferry Terminal. We’ll break ground within a month and have the terminal built in a year. That’s record time.”

The mayor paused for applause, but very little came. People weren’t withholding it exactly. They just waited to hear more.

“You’ll see that banner reads ‘Welcome Home.’ Wonder who we’re welcoming? It’s
you
. We surrendered Stone Mason Square long ago. Surrendered the land to people who used it as a toilet. But I’m telling you those days are over. We can make this whole city ours again. Ours, not theirs!”

The mayor stood at the lectern and leaned into the applause as if the sound alone would lift him. He propped his elbows on either side of the lectern and seemed less tired than before. Even the people who’d only showed up to hate him had been seduced, if not by the speech then by the sight of those brass gates. They didn’t go loopy for the guy, weren’t whistling and crying. The approval might have been cautious, but there were no more jeers.

The mayor’s aides tried to lead him away from the crowd now. They must’ve been used to making escapes. But not this time. The mayor refused. He had his bodyguards open a path. He moved ahead and shook people’s hands.

The crowd followed him out of Stone Mason Square. They were all dispersing east, up the corridor of Broadway. The mayor’s car idled there. The freestanding gates already seemed forgotten, and they looked so much smaller now. The gates were odd there without a dock, like a man wearing nothing but a cummerbund. And the lectern, on its own, looked as out of place in that environment as a winter sled.

A breeze came off the Bay and shook the gates. They clacked loudly. The sunlight made them look silver and tacky, like discarded jewelry. The banner, still strung across them, flopped lazily.

Ms. Henry and I were some of the only people left on the patio, and Stone Mason Square, below us, had cleared in quick time. This place might’ve been famous for its beggars once, but I couldn’t see any just now. We’d passed so many as we’d walked down San Pablo Avenue. That
must have been where they’d all gone. They hadn’t disappeared. They’d been ejected.

The ferry gates shook again, but this time I didn’t feel a breeze.

They shook loudly. Fierce enough that the Gray Lady and I turned our heads.

Then the gates exploded. They cracked in two.

One gate flung backward into the Bay and landed in the water with a splash. The other was knocked flat and burned black on the ground.

The mayor’s lectern was a woodpile.

And the half-incinerated banner blew into the air, snapping like a flag. When it floated back down, it had been reduced to a single singed word: “Welcome …”

POLICE INTERVIEWED THE GRAY LADY
, myself, and the others who’d been near there. They couldn’t possibly take us all to a police station so they just broke us into groups and took our statements across from Stone Mason Square.

The voices! So many of us yammering beside one another. It didn’t sound like
a
foreign language but all of them playing at once. I found myself listening to the chorus as if I could find a buried meaning, but I’d be lying if I said the message was clear.

A squadron of EMT workers herded the witnesses to their ambulances, just looking in our eyes, asking about aches. There were a lot more tears than bruises. I saw a wine bar on one corner and felt like enjoying a few pints, quarts, gallons. After giving my report, I made for the bar, but the Gray Lady hissed at me.

“Ricky! This way.”

She cut through the people here just like she had earlier, doing the bump. After we got through, she pulled out a big old cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke into it.

When she got off, she said, “I told you Solomon was dangerous!”

“He did that?” I asked.

“You think it was spontaneous combustion?”

“Just because you say he did it doesn’t mean I believe it.”

My right leg was cold again. My foot already dragging. Just a half mile had aggravated the condition. The Gray Lady turned to me, unhappy with my skepticism, but I refused to apologize. Her little round face, her
large brown eyes, I’d never met a person who intimidated me more. Forget killing Solomon Clay, just then I thought she might murder me. But she ignored my challenge and looked at my leg.

“I’ve got aspirin in my purse,” she said. “If you’re in that much pain.”

“This isn’t an aspirin kind of problem, Ms. Henry.”

“Well, what do you want me to do, carry you?”

“You wouldn’t carry me even if I was dying.”

We kept walking, but slower. People continued to move past us on either side of Broadway. Jogging, sprinting, skipping toward Stone Mason Square. We were some of the only people moving away from the disaster. Around us the great buildings of downtown Garland cast long shadows.

“He came to my hotel this morning,” I blurted out. She didn’t have to ask who.

“You saw him?”

“No, but a well-dressed man showed up and asked for me by name. They told him I was staying on the fourth floor. And he asked about you, too.”

“It’s no problem,” she said. But then she bit her lip so hard I thought she’d draw blood.

The Gray Lady went into her purse and then tossed me the bottle of aspirin. A way of making peace. I knew they wouldn’t work because I’d been dealing with this pain since 2002, but how would it look if I complained and then didn’t accept help? So I opened the bottle, popped about five aspirin in my mouth, and swallowed. Closed the bottle and looked at the label out of habit.

ASPIRIN
. That’s all it said.

The Gray Lady was armed with generics.

A JetBlue flight, putting me up in a flophouse, now some no-name aspirin. How about some Tylenol? A Bufferin! And I haven’t even focused on the ten-pound cell phone she carried. I thought about the one snow-blower and two shovels that the Unlikely Scholars were forced to share in Vermont. Euphinia and Grace bartering for my office supplies. It was like trying to fund the CIA with a lemonade stand.

“Where are we going now? The Washburns?”

“Claude is coming for us. He’ll drop you at the hotel so you can rest your leg. But be down in the lobby by ten.”

“And then?”

She pointed behind us, to Stone Mason Square. “We’re coming back.”

“How are we going to get past all those cops? They’ll have the National Guard out here by tomorrow morning. Homeland Security too.”

“That’s why we’re going tonight. Claude will get us in. That’s his job.”

MY FATHER BOUGHT A NEW CAR
in January of 1972. Only a few weeks after he realized our hearts were no longer close to his, and soon after he made my sister melt her ring. I think he just got it out of spite. You don’t love me? Then I’m blowing
my
money. He’d been rebuffed and would have his revenge. He bought a 1972 Jeep Wagoneer, which was absolutely aberrant in New York at the time. You should’ve seen the way people came down out of their apartments if Sargent Rice tried parking that behemoth between their cars. Even an Oldsmobile or a Cadillac shrank when he pulled alongside to parallel park.

It was big, brown, and barely manageable on the tighter streets in Queens. It let in too much sunlight and the tan leather seats got so hot in the summer that we placed damp towels underneath us for even the shortest trips. He spent most of our money on that car, even the amounts he should’ve tithed to the Washerwomen. And every year afterward, 1973, ’74, ’75, he traded in the nearly new truck and bought a newer one. Not just Jeeps, but always a four-wheel drive. In the last year of his life he paid more on his car note than his mortgage. The new cars became his only extravagance, and no one could persuade him to stop.

You have to picture Sargent Rice. Slim and all, but with a little belly. He wore his hair cut close, which only served to outline his widow’s peak. A skinny man with a fat face, a pleasant face, widest at the cheekbones, and small black eyes that rarely focused on you. He’d be going over my homework, but looking out at the skyline, the ceiling, the night-stand. This made him seem energetic, inquisitive, even cerebral. My
mother’s the one who introduced me to Manly Wade Wellman and Stephen Crane, but my father’s the one I called wise. Isn’t that always the way? A mother’s reward for running away is hate, but a father’s is adoration. So was Sargent Rice actually so thoughtful? I don’t know, but the farther he drifted, the more I believed it.

As the first few years passed and these new trucks just kept coming, my dad did hear about it from the Washerwomen. The three sisters as well as the other adults. But the community had much bigger problems than the excesses of one man. Flushing, our neighborhood, was curious about us at first, then amused. Then they ignored us for a while. But their interest returned, as regular as yuletide, and this time they focused on the kids. Were we being mistreated? Were we loved? They could’ve just asked us, but they wouldn’t do that. People used to snap on my father, how could he buy a new car when Daphne and I wore the same clothes for years? But were their hearts really bleeding for the kiddies? None of those concerned citizens ever slipped me a winter sweater.

Their worry for the children only masked a patient hostility. The more we proselytized in their streets, the less they could stand our presence. If there hadn’t been girls and boys to worry about, they would’ve raised alarms about the way the Washerwomen treated their pets. In 1973 we began getting visits from social workers, children’s services, that kind of thing. They were squeezing us. But that didn’t stop my father and his fetish for new trucks.

Every time Sargent Rice went to his truck, he’d open the driver’s door and brush two fingers against his headrest. Then bring those fingers to his fleshy nose and inhale the scent. He did it theatrically when we laughed or covered our faces in disgust, but that was just a pretense made for us. He meant it. When he was alone, he did the same thing, without shame. (I know because I used to watch him from our window.) Those fingers went under his nose and then he’d rub them against each other, the tip of his pointer finger going up and down along his thumb. It must have been a wonderful scent, reassuring maybe. Sargent Rice and his car. Himself and himself. Sometimes a man retreats so far inward he mistakes isolation for dominion.