Big Machine (31 page)

What if the Devils of the Marsh left something
growing
in me?

As this thought occurred to me, my legs shook, my feet slipped off the wheelchair’s stirrups. My shoes dragged on the hospital floor as if I was trying to stop us from moving forward, into a future where the parasite inside me was real.

My next thought was simple: I have to get it the hell out.

Dr. France returned me to the exam room, and as soon as he left, I snatched the corner cupboards open, looking for something strong to ingest. Only two problems with my plan: I had no idea what to look for, and the room had nothing useful. Not unless I wanted to stuff cotton balls down my throat until I choked.

Dr. France had promised more tests, but I didn’t need them. As soon as he’d said the word
pregnant
, I knew that I was. Didn’t matter what that technician saw on the sonogram. I accepted what I’d been feeling. Wiped out. Nauseous. Even the raw nipples. I still had that checklist in my mind because of Gayle, the woman I got pregnant ten years ago.

Gayle knew she was pregnant even before the symptoms kicked in. Long before we took a test. I’d asked her how she could be so sure, and she’d said, “The body knows.” At the time, I thought she was doing some of that mystical bullshit women get on. Where they act as if their menstrual periods control the tides. But now I realized what she’d meant. I’d
felt
different but didn’t know how to name it. Couldn’t imagine it until the doctor said the word.

It wasn’t in my stomach, the ultrasound proved that, but even the heat between my shoulder blades had cooled. The Devil down in the sewer had stabbed me in my forearm. It must’ve injected the embryo there. But the little thing hadn’t stayed still. Maybe it moved through my bloodstream. From forearm to shoulder, shoulder to neck. Where would it end up?

Better question: where would it come out?

In my examination stall I took the chance to roll flat, looking up at the ceiling. No pain between the blades. I squeezed my arms, my legs, my chest, but felt nothing strange. Wiggled around on my back. I snatched a tongue depressor from the jar on a shelf and pressed it against the roof of my mouth. No sign.

Then I remembered that I did have a particularly strong medicine with me already. Stuff I’d brought with me from Vermont. Six baggies of heroin, right there in my coat pocket. That much dope could kill some adults. What about a little parasite? So now instead of medicine I searched for a syringe. I could cook up all six bags, find the egg, and fire a hotshot into its heart. Heroin could save my life.

I found calipers and colored medical shears on the shelves. Cotton tipped applicators and even extra rolls of exam table paper. But no needles. Not anywhere. The hunt left me winded, so I lay back on the table again. I had even started to sweat.

There was a rumble outside the examination room doors. Not an explosion, but an argument. Real yelling in the waiting room. Two women. Soon a nurse came to me, huffing, like she’d been in a race.

She said, “It’s a lady out there says she needs to come talk to you. Says she’s your wife.”

“She said that?” I laughed.

“You got a wife?”

“Sure,” I said.

The nurse frowned, unhappy to get the confirmation. She’d probably wanted to send Ms. Henry out on her ass. I didn’t feel the same way. I know it was a lie of convenience, that’s how Ms. Henry would explain it. “Family only” allowed in the examination rooms. But I felt glad anyway. She could’ve said she was my sister. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear that.

“What did the doctor say?” she asked, once she got in back.

Ms. Henry pulled the curtain closed. She brought a chair to the exam table. Her dry lips were cracked, so she licked them.

“They’re still running tests. How you doing out there?”

The Gray Lady said, “I’m getting itchy to move.”

I swished my feet around on the exam table, and the butcher’s paper underneath me crackled. Even though I kept up a conversation, I can’t say I was entirely involved.

She said, “Now, here’s the thing. It’s past three
A.M.
, and every minute I’m not after Solomon is a minute he might hurt more people. Who knows how many more bums with bombs he’s got.”

“Well, what do you want to do?”

She put her hand on the green plastic padding of the bed, her fingertips not even an inch away from my left hip. Half an inch. I didn’t move any closer, but I watched her hand there. Instead of speaking she looked down at it too. It was like the sea rolling up to the shore. Below the surface they’re already touching.

“I need to go,” she said quietly. “But you stay here. Let the doctors do what they can.”

Now I cleared my mind and looked at her. I sat up, though that took effort, even with the painkillers they’d finally administered.

“Just a little banged up, Ms. Henry. But I can go.”

She looked around like she might ask one of the nurses, but it was a new shift and none of them knew me as the medical oddity. Even Dr. France had left to eat something and wouldn’t be back for a while. My
charts explained the curious situation, but information isn’t useful until it’s been unearthed. For now I was just a middle-aged man with no visible injuries. A little worn-out, maybe, but who’s going to focus on that guy when there’s a teenager with a bullet wound?

“The Devils of the Marsh,” I began. “What kind of things do they do for the Voice?”

She squeezed her nose to wipe off some sweat. “Anything it wants, I guess.”

I had trouble asking the next question. I leaned toward her. “Even reproduction?”

Now she snapped back fast. “You won’t stop being a damn fool for one minute? I’d call you a child, but that would be an insult to boys!”

I scooted back too, and crossed my arms.

“You make it real hard to like you sometimes,” I said.

Ms. Henry turned to me then, looked directly at me, and it felt as if I’d never known her before. The corners of her eyebrows sagged, and the lids turned so heavy they nearly shut. Her black pupils became passageways directly inside, and I saw a sadness dwelling there.

She nodded. “That is what people say.”

Who knew she could be hurt?

I swung my legs over the side of the exam table.

“Go outside, Adele. And I’ll get dressed.”

I’D BEEN STRIPPED DOWN
to socks and a gown, so I had a lot of clothes to put on. I couldn’t do it fast. My tweed slacks, my chukka boots. I buttoned up my shirt and donned the Norfolk jacket. It took a good few minutes to do all this, and as I moved, I wondered where
it
moved. Where it grew inside me.

As I finished dressing, I thought of what had pulled me out to Cedar Rapids in 2002. What had gotten me onto that plane. Would I have gone to Cedar Rapids for anyone besides Wilfred? I doubt it. I doubt it. But by then he and I were the last of the Washerwomen’s children still alive. He lured me out to Iowa with the promise of easy money, but he had to do that. He couldn’t just tell me I was flying out there to die.

I put my hands in my pockets and felt something in the left. Found the battery-powered candle I’d bought at Laguna Lake that afternoon. It was still on, casting its electric light weakly, as ineffective as that congregation’s prayers. Neither had protected the victims at Laguna Lake from Solomon Clay. I dropped the light into the trash. Its glimmer filled the bag. I shut the top.

Which is how I got the idea. One last place where I could try to find
a needle. The orange medical waste receptacle sat in the other corner. A little reddish-orange bucket. I watched the curtain of my exam room, but heard no footsteps coming. I couldn’t shoot up there, in the exam room, but if I found a needle, I could sneak it out with me. Inject that hotshot when I was alone.

I got on my knees and lifted the lid.

MS. HENRY STOOD
at the hospital exit. And, boy, did she look tired. I’m not talking about a few days of work. How long had she been running around for the Library? She leaned against a column and smiled when she looked over, but it was a pinched grin. Maybe she was just as concerned about me. My strain must’ve been showing. But she didn’t second-guess or send me back to bed. She just turned toward the sliding doors. As I hobbled along, following her, the television in the waiting room played some anonymous courtroom show. Then the television blared a little trumpet tune, and a graphic appeared that read,
BREAKING
NEWS
.

Ms. Henry was practically outside. I’d almost reached the lobby doors.

A voice, scratchy and distant, spoke to the room.

“Solomon Clay is a lion in the wilderness. Solomon Clay is our universal friend.”

Ms. Henry rushed back inside so fast that she spun me around in her wake. I had to balance myself against a column so I wouldn’t tip over.

The rest of the waiting room wasn’t as shocked as us. Talk about underwhelmed. The horn tones of the emergency broadcast threw most of them into a trance. It was like a signal to
stop
listening. A few shut their eyes for a quick nap. Only one guy actually got angry. He slapped his thigh and said, “They interrupted my Judge Maybelline!”

A grainy image blipped across the television screen. Figures shifting in the dark. People broadcasting from inside a cave. Another terrorist video from Iraq? Or was it Afghanistan? Or Belarus? There’d been so
many, I doubt the general public really differentiated them anymore. I couldn’t be the only one. Now the video paused midmovement and a news anchor’s dry voice spoke over this picture.

“These are the images delivered to our offices less than an hour ago. A VHS cassette literally dropped at our doorstep. This from a group claiming responsibility for the recent incidents here in Garland. While their claims have not been verified, authorities
are
taking this video seriously. Please be warned that some of the language is of an adult nature.”

The on-screen image moved again. One man in a cave. Two? No. Three. Sitting in a row. Hands in their laps. Faces hard to make out. Were they black or white or yellow or brown? Couldn’t say. They were shadows.

The figure in the middle spoke in that same hoarse voice.

“We are the Church of Clay.”

The two shadows on either side of him clapped their hands and shouted.

“Isn’t it wonderful!”

“Isn’t it good!”

I looked at Ms. Henry. She’d reached into her purse automatically, her hand sitting limp inside it as she watched. I placed my hand against my jacket pocket and felt the outline of the syringe I’d dug out of the orange trash bin.

“Do you recognize us?” the figure in the middle asked. “Even if I told you my name, showed you my face, it wouldn’t matter worth a damn. You still wouldn’t see me.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!”

“Isn’t it good!”

Others in the waiting room sat up. Those who were napping opened their eyes.

“We are the sons of sorrow. The children you despise. And most of my life I thought that was all I’d ever be.”

Nurses walked out from the examination room doors. One of them went to the intake station and found a flat, gray remote in a drawer. She pressed a button, and the voice on the television got louder.

“But then a man showed me that I’d been blind. Solomon Clay spat in the dirt, rubbed the mud over my eyes, and when I washed the mud away, I could truly see.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!”

“Isn’t it good!”

The crowd in the waiting room looked left and right. Trying to understand exactly who these three shadows were addressing. I know he doesn’t mean me. Must be you.

“You got the game fixed! Your slot machines won’t hit the jackpot for people like me.”

The other two shadows spoke quietly now.

“Is that wonderful?”

“Is that good?”

The television couldn’t get any louder, but the nurse with the remote sure tried. She held the button down, and the little green bars lit up at the bottom of the big screen. They were so bright you thought they might illuminate the hidden faces. Even the children in the room had grown quiet. We all heard.

“But now it’s our turn. It’s time for our reward. You’ve had your round. The Church of Clay is going to wipe the board clean. The whole world will know our name.
Fuck
the meek. The despised will inherit the earth!”

The other two shadows clapped harder now than they had before.

People in the waiting room sat back. Some stood. They glared at the screen. One woman even spat with indignation.

“What the hell did I ever do to them?” an old man asked. “I’m just trying to get mine.”

A younger woman, a teenager really, said, “They don’t mean us. They mean the politicians. Or white folks. That’s who they angry at.”

A dozen people nodded. Not any of us. Not regular folks. We were exempt. This made sense to people. This comforted them.

“I don’t care who you are!” the shadow on the screen yelled, as if he had actually heard us. “Not one of you is innocent, no matter what fairy tale you tell yourselves. Oppression doesn’t make you noble. Or exempt. Did you sleep in the gutter last night? Are you chased out of bed by the rain? No! This is a new era. It’s time to choose new teams. Not even your babies will be spared. The milk they drink will be pestilence.”

Now the teenage girl jumped up.

“But that’s not fair!” she yelled.

The shadows on the screen clapped and shouted.

“Isn’t it wonderful!”

“Isn’t it good!”

There could’ve been more, the shadows sure seemed amped enough to continue, but they were interrupted. Suddenly sunlight flared from the right side of the video. In a moment those three shadows changed from phantoms into old men. In this light you could see the one in the middle sitting in a wheelchair. They weren’t in a cave, just a dirty hallway. The video stopped there, like it had been chopped. The moment took on the significance of a vision. Three old men, all in profile, jeering at the sun.

“They’re black!” the teenage girl shouted.

Some black folks in the waiting room covered their faces from shame.

I reached out to grab Adele, but thought better of it. So instead I blew at the back of her head to get her attention. She touched her scalp and looked at the ceiling. Then back at me.