Big Machine (24 page)

“You’re not supposed to be smoking,” I said. “Karen is sick.”

“My sister’s not sick. She’s dying.”

Rose went onto her toes, put her face against the mesh window screen, brought her right hand to her mouth, and pulled on that cigarette. She let the smoke sit in her cheeks so long it came out her nose first. She blew the last of it through her tightened lips.

“Have you kids been talking much about Veronica?” she asked.

I pointed at her and the cigarette. Strident as only a child can be.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” I scolded.

It hung on Rose’s lip as she leaned back against the wall.

“You’re right, Ricky.”

“Then why don’t you stop?”

The cigarette dropped from her mouth, into the tub, and Rose stooped to get it. When she stood again, she sighed deeply. She said, “King Jesus is perfect. Not me.”

HOW CAN I DESCRIBE
what it felt like when I first saw Solomon Clay?

This way: there’s only one train platform in Manhattan that looks like a missile silo, that’s the 53rd and Lexington Avenue stop on the E line. Its low ceiling makes the space feel cramped, but the tunnel walls curve out in a way that plays with your depth perception. These crazy dimensions make the track look fantastically long. Instead of six hundred feet, it feels like six hundred miles. You see the headlights of a Queens-bound E approaching, but it’s hours before the train reaches the platform. And you watch. There’s a tremor in the ground as it charges forward, moving fast enough to kick up a hurricane. You lean out, and the wind snaps your clothes. It tries to pull you down onto the tracks. Then the lead car is so near you can see the motorman in his booth. If you don’t step back, that train will turn you into paste. Your heart dips but you can’t pull away. The metal wheels screech. Your teeth begin to ache. The silver thunder rushes closer. Threatening to detonate.

Solomon Clay marched toward me.

“Ricky Rice!” he shouted. “You black bastard.”

Parents sitting at the benches looked shocked, a few covered their children’s eyes by mistake instead of their ears so the kids still heard him. Solomon Clay clapped as he approached, applauding the way he’d scandalized the proper folk. He was his own best audience.

“I was starting to think we’d never meet,” he said. “I figured I’d just stay in one place and let
you
catch up with me.”

I’d been right about one thing: the man was old. He looked like he’d
been around for centuries, but I don’t mean shriveled or worn down. More like a cast-metal sculpture. He’d been dipped in bronze and left to dry. When he spoke, his cheeks resisted the movement and he had to strain to show his teeth. His features remained so stiff that his head seemed like a bust. When he clapped his hands, I swear I heard the faint clanging sound of a hammer striking a metal plate. But that’s not how I knew who he was. What had I recognized from one hundred yards away?

Of course it was the clothes.

Solomon Clay wore a six-buttoned black wool double-breasted suit with a cream-colored tie peeking out the collar. A black Borsalino beaver fur fedora tilted to the side. A pair of black brogues on his feet, and over them, the final touch, white satin spats. Spats! He shimmered inside his platinum threads. A god in gods’ clothing.

And I was just a tired junky in a knockoff Norfolk suit. All thoughts of the screening truck disappeared. “I’m here to kill you,” I said.

“If you can make a fist, I’ll be surprised, Ricky. You look terrible.”

I looked down at my hands, both left and right, and couldn’t manage much more than twitches. If he’d just let me sleep for about thirty hours, let my legs get the feeling back in them, I’d be able to do some damage. Maybe if I could have a nice spa day first.

Solomon said, “I knew the man who wore that suit before you.”

I crossed my arms over the jacket as if he was going to snatch it off my back.

“His name was Dabney Reed, and he died in those clothes.”

“This is a copy of the one I saw in the picture,” I said. “Harold and Fayard showed me.”

Solomon pointed at me and laughed, but it came through his stiffened lips like a hiss.

“Those are
the
clothes in the picture, Ricky. They aren’t knockoffs. They’re relics.”

I found myself undoing the belt loop in my Norfolk suit without thinking. Dabney Reed had died in this coat. And who knew how many others before him? It was like finding out you’re sleeping on your uncle’s deathbed. I got the coat off, but then I couldn’t drop it on the ground or throw it into Laguna Lake. My hand just wouldn’t release it. I didn’t want to wear it, but I didn’t want to let it go. I looked to Solomon Clay, but he wasn’t studying me.

“This here is Martin,” Solomon Clay said, and a man stepped from behind him.

I say man, but it was a kid, one of the homeless teenagers I’d seen all over Garland. A white kid with long, unwashed hair and tattered
clothes. His skin splotched red on the cheeks and forehead. His face looked like a piece of chewed bubble gum. The boy had an enormous backpack, which he dragged on the ground, probably carried everything he owned. This child, Martin, stood in the shadow of Solomon Clay.

“Spare anything?” Martin asked me, sounding both sad
and
antagonistic.

“You’re hanging out with beggars now?” I asked.

Solomon Clay sniffed. “I wanted a better class of people in my life.”

“Anything?” the kid insisted.

But I didn’t answer him, I couldn’t. I saw a brown splotch on one sleeve of my Norfolk coat and couldn’t stop staring. It was only dirt, that’s what I told myself, but another part of me became convinced it was Dabney Reed’s blood.

Martin shook his head. Mr. Clay patted the boy.

“Ricky here was a heroin addict for almost twenty years, and somehow he thinks he’s better than you, Martin. I told you that’s how it would be, didn’t I?”

Martin looked at me when he answered. “Yes, you did,” he said.

“Now you ought to get on,” Solomon said. “And do what you’re meant to do.”

Martin looked even younger now, with that mopey frown. His adult body hadn’t grown in. Not more than fifteen, and a small fifteen at that. He lifted that backpack, swung it around, onto his shoulders, and nearly sent himself to the ground.

“This is for you,” Solomon said, and handed the kid a folded hundred-dollar bill. He did this slowly, theatrically, so I wouldn’t miss his generosity. It was the first thing to draw my attention from my coat.

Martin took the money. He stared at the bill in his palm. Finally Solomon Clay pushed Martin forward, and the boy stumbled off.

“You should’ve given him a few bucks,” he said.

“I didn’t want to.”

Solomon Clay nodded. “I relied on that.”

But, frankly, I wasn’t bothered about Martin. Instead I found myself watching the way sunlight reflected off Solomon Clay’s face. Or was it coming
from
his face? I’d never seen skin burn so brightly before.

There are ancient paintings and sculptures that depict Moses with small rams’ horns. He wasn’t born that way, of course. It was a transformation that occurred after Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, the effect of having seen the true face of his God. But the horn imagery came about because of a mistranslation from the Hebrew to the Latin Vulgate. It wasn’t that Moses sported shofars. It’s that the word for “horns” is the same for “send out rays.” Our friend Saint Jerome made a translator’s mistake. It can be tough to go from one
language to another. The Washerwomen grappled with this problem as they wrote their holy book, what to update, approximate, or delete.

When Moses returned from the mountain, his skin glowed. It sent out rays. I remembered this as I watched Solomon Clay’s gleaming face.

“Where have you been?” I whispered, though I didn’t even mean to ask the question, to flatter the man with my curiosity. The words just came.

“You’ll never get there,” he said. “It’s too late. You’re already corrupted.”

“Me
and
Ms. Henry are here to kill you.”

“Is that supposed to scare me more?”

“It should,” I said. “She’s no joke.”

He waved his right hand in the air.

“That’s your team? A dopehead and a … Before she came to the Library, that woman sold for pennies. You understand me? Twenty dollars! That’s what men paid to love her. You could love her in the mouth or right up the ass, but
she’d
have to pay
you
to go swimming up that funky tweeter. That’s your Ms. Henry. A shitstain whore.”

“I suppose you were born in a manger?” I asked.

Why defend her? She certainly hadn’t done much to earn it. Not from me. I guess it was an instinctive reaction. Partly about Ms. Henry, sure, but even more because Solomon Clay seemed to think I was the kind of man who could be turned so easily. Adele Henry had been a prostitute. Was that supposed to make me wretch? Come on. He’d have to do better. I remember Gayle, the last woman I’d truly loved. She’d stabbed me right through my shoulder with a shish kebab skewer, and even still we’d almost had that baby.

Almost.

Solomon Clay sighed. “They give you an order to kill me, and you just snap to it?”

“I had my doubts,” I said. “But now that we’ve met, I’m hoping to cap you in the chest.”

I wasn’t feeling brave exactly, but the way he’d spoken about Ms. Henry had sparked a tempest in my heart. I was as surprised by this reaction as Solomon Clay.

“This is the whole problem, Ricky. Right here. When you showed up at the Washburn Library, for all your problems, you were still your own man. That’s my guess. But you spend a couple of months being coddled and you sign your soul away.”

“My soul’s my own,” I said.

“That’s what you think, but it isn’t so. Remember what the Voice told Judah Washburn?”

I am the father of the despised child
.

“But let me tell you what my years with the Library taught me. Oppression doesn’t make people noble. Give any of us a little comfort, and we’ll kill to keep it. The despised become despicable. The Unlikely Scholars aren’t any different. Adele finally taught me that. I had to
leave
the Library to find the Voice’s children.”

I turned around then, a snap so fast it actually hurt my neck. Where had that boy with the backpack gone? Where did you get to, Martin? Solomon Clay saw me searching, so he grabbed my shoulder and pointed.

There were these big wet splotches, like dabs from a giant painter’s brush, along the concrete path next to Laguna Lake. Already one hundred yards away, Martin lifted his heavy bag back onto his shoulders after having taken a moment’s rest. And when he did, there was another splotch on the concrete.

Solomon said, “What if I told you the reason Judah never heard the Voice again is because it was disappointed in him?”

“A blind black dude got all the way across the country with two chests of gold,” I said. “I think Judah did pretty good.”

“And that’s it? The Voice blessed Judah so he could sit on some money in the woods? Nah. The Voice stopped talking to Judah because Judah was selfish.”

It was hard to follow Solomon Clay. My mind was on Martin over there. I meant to run in that direction, but I was bone-tired. And, I hate to admit it, I was scared.

“Now you’ve got that mutt, the Dean, giving orders. But he wants to hoard the blessings, just like Judah. Keep the Voice his secret out there in the woods. But that’s exactly why he’s never heard it directly. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s not deciphering the Voice in those field reports. He’s only eavesdropping.”

Martin really started moving. He’d basically retraced my steps. From the benches to the walking path, and now he’d reached the congregation under the colonnade.

Martin looked at the congregation ruefully. They’d built a fire under there. It burned in a small metal barrel. Battery-powered lights weren’t going to keep those people warm. Flames rose out of the little drum. How long before they’d be forced to put it out? Not long probably, but they’d let it heat the air while they could.

“How can you know all this?” I asked. “It was two hundred years ago.”

Solomon Clay squeezed my arm tight. “I know because the Voice found someone it could trust. Your team is too late. The Voice already spoke. Two years ago. To
me
.”

Martin dropped his head, straining forward as the heavy weight of his bag resisted.

There were only a handful of folks under the colonnade now, the preacher in the leather coat among them. Now that Martin had started toward them, he really sped up fast. That’s momentum for you. From a walk to a trot to a jog to a run. But the congregation stayed largely unaware because the minister was speaking to them again.

Martin’s face lost all expression as he rushed toward the congregation. He looked blank, empty, void. I reached out with my right hand, clutching at the air.

I felt a cold touch across my heart.

“But those people are on
your
side,” I whispered.

“Being sympathetic doesn’t spare them. I’m here to sweep the board clean! Then the despised will inherit the earth.”

The boy reached the barrel, and, as he did, he flipped the backpack off. He found a new strength. When he’d stood in front of me, he’d been a frail boy but he’d aged.

Martin lifted the soaking backpack and dropped it inside the barrel.

The congregation had no time to run or even shout.

Their fire ignited the explosives inside.

Martin just stood over the little barrel. He didn’t try to escape. Martin used his last moment to wipe his moist hands on the front of his jeans. I saw him do this.

Then there was a blast so loud it rocked everyone in the park. Children and adults went flat on the ground. Laid out and dazed. I went down. No one screamed, that’s the amazing thing. Kids didn’t cry. A row of ducks watched solemnly from the shore.

The roof of the colonnade went up directly, like a gentleman lifting his hat. Flames shot out from between the columns, and the congregation cooked in the blaze. I smelled it. Clouds of black smoke blotted out the sky, and the roof finally crashed down again, landing at an angle.