Big Machine (33 page)

“Now sit down,” he said. “And let me tell you about Judah Wash-burn.”

She sat, but it took all her concentration just to listen, no murmurs and no questions. When he was done, she had no reaction.

Now he tapped his computer and, nearby, a group of printers started. She heard them chugging and turned to stare while the little man spoke, at length, about what they were printing. That the field notes were like Scripture. An American gospel. When she turned back, the Dean watched her, his head cocked to the left.

“You don’t seem all that … enthusiastic.”

Adele said, “I’m glad to know all these things, sure.”

“But?”

Adele remembered what her mother used to say when grandma called and asked if the pair attended church in the proper way. Adele’s mother would throttle the phone and say, “God and the Devil have decided they’re unreachable. So I’ve stopped trying to reach them.” This best described Adele’s faith, even now. Thus, the Dean’s zeal didn’t convert her. She tried to think of how best to explain her belief system to the man.

She said, “I’m a working person. That’s it. So why don’t you tell me what you need and let me go do it. The quicker I’m back in my cabin, the happier I’m going to be.”

The Dean leaned forward, chin over his desk. Her disinterest seemed to make
him
work harder to woo her. Even he seemed surprised when he related his own story.

“I was a crew member on the SS
Antonio Maceo
before I came to the Library. A steamer in Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line corporation. I loved Mr. Garvey very much, and looked up to him like a god. I got his attention by contributing quite a few big checks to the UNIA. Unfortunately, I must admit, those checks were forgeries. All of them bounced. And yet, when he found out, Mr. Garvey didn’t throw me in jail. He was forgiving. He said I could make it up to him by serving on the crew of the
Antonio Maceo
. I didn’t hesitate. I was joining a great Negro empire! But you know how it is. The reality didn’t live up to the dream. Our ship had more troubles than the African continent.

“On our maiden voyage, from New York to Cuba, me and a brother named Hastings were working the boilers. They’d been giving us trouble from the moment Mr. Garvey bought the ship. Hastings and I were posted at those boilers to guard against any … embarrassments. The work was dull and stressful at the same time, like waiting for your sick child’s fever to break or become an emergency. Then I heard a splash off the larboard. A woman calling out for help. I ran to her, confused. We didn’t have women in the crew. Hastings stayed behind.

“When I reached the water, all I saw was a school of bluefish. I’m staring down at them, but I still hear the woman’s voice. I’m thinking she’s
under
them somehow, but that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Those fish would’ve scattered before she even touched the water. And now the sound changes; she stops calling for help and starts speaking. To me. I hear my name. And I find myself leaning over the side of the boat, stretching and stretching, straining to understand her. And then, splash, I fell right into the water. The bluefish shot right off.”

The Dean patted his forehead with a handkerchief. He’d started to sweat.

“Before I even called for help, the boiler exploded. Just like that. Hastings died right away. I was in the water two nights before rescue found me. It wasn’t so long before the Library’s invitation arrived.”

The Dean lay his hands flat on his desk and breathed deeply. He said, “How would you describe what happened to
you
in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1997?”

“I wouldn’t,” she said, suddenly more sober than she’d been since sunrise.

She understood the Dean knew something, had a general idea about her ordeal in a New Jersey motel room, maybe, but no one was getting the particulars. If she hadn’t told her own mother, why would she tell him?

The Dean drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Do you understand this is a rare opportunity? To be invited here. To speak with me?”

“Yes, I do,” she said.

“And would you like to stay?”

“I know I don’t want to leave.”

He dropped his elbows onto his desk so he could lean even farther across it. He seemed exasperated, but maybe a little intrigued too. Most of the Scholars would’ve swallowed sawdust to be in Adele’s chair.

“Each Scholar’s moment of clarity is never completely clear, Ms. Henry. Interpreting the field notes is like listening to a conversation through a closed door. I can’t pick up every single thing, but I get the idea. Will you at least tell me the promise you made in Paterson?”

The Dean leaned back, crossed his hands on his flat stomach, then undid one button of his vest.

Adele hadn’t been the kind of girl who’d always wanted to be pretty. She’d just wanted to look cool. As juvenile as it sounds, at thirty-eight, that was still all she wanted. But when she leaned forward in her seat, the chair pinched the sides of her thick thighs. And when she leaned back to try to cross one leg, the top leg slipped off. Too much meat below the waist. She felt she wasn’t built for swank. In this chair Adele had to sit straight, which made her feel like a child.

Adele remembered that motel in New Jersey. Being held down in the tub, nothing to stare at but the water-stained ceiling tiles.

“I promised to get them before they get me,” she said.

The Dean nodded. “Well, then, maybe you can do what I need.”

The Dean stood up, walked to the four printers. They hummed in the darkness. He returned to his desk with a sheaf of printed pages in his hands.

“I’ll make it plain. The Library is under threat, Ms. Henry.”

“And what do I have to do to protect it?”

“Whatever is required to keep it secret, to keep it safe.”

“Why does secrecy matter?”

He said, “You want the cosmic answer or the pragmatic one?”

She didn’t even speak, just curled her lips and tilted her head.

“We pay our staff in cash, and the Unlikely Scholars don’t file. That’s one hundred fifty years of back taxes. If the IRS came looking to be repaid, we’d go bankrupt for sure.”

This answer actually pleased her. Simple, practical, commonsense. The Washburn Library was dodging its bills.

The printers rattled, and the small video panels on their sides turned bright.

“So if we lose this fight, I’ll have to pack up this office,” he said. “And you’ll get booted out of that little cabin you love. Right out on your ass. And then where will you go?”

“I could find something,” she said, defensively.

“Go back to selling that ass?” the Dean muttered.

She stood, shot right up. “You speak like that one more time. Go ahead and test me.”

The Dean smiled. “No, Ms. Henry, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“So
what’s
the threat?”

“Mr. Washburn. He’s the threat. He means to shut us down.”

She flopped down into her chair again. “Why?”

“He isn’t as devout as we are. Do you know Solomon Clay?”

“I’ve read his files …”

“I’m sending you west. With him.”

“With … ?” She squeezed the arm rests of her chair. “He’s here?”

The Dean opened the middle drawer of his desk and set a thin gray manuscript onto the tabletop. “You can have the life you want, Ms. Henry. The one you deserve. I promise you.”

She looked at the book.

“And what’s it going to cost me?”

“You just have to remember who gave it to you,” he said, opening the cover.

The Dean flipped through a series of yellowed, aging pages. Adele saw lines of writing in black ink, red ink, even scrawls made with something like ash. Different penmanship, maybe different eras. She couldn’t read the words with the ledger upside down.

“I’m sending you with Mr. Clay. He’s going to try and convince Mr. Washburn to change his mind, but you’re my fail-safe. Solomon thinks of himself as the Scholar of all Scholars. More a prophet than a worker. He won’t get blood on his hands, if it comes to that. But you will.”

“So you don’t really trust him?” she asked.

“No. But I don’t really trust anyone.”

“So why send me?”

The Dean smiled. “I trust your greed.”

And Adele felt slightly pitiful. This came on suddenly, overwhelmingly. It was because she knew instantly that she would do it. “It” being
whatever
was required to keep what she’d been given. Earned.
Deserved
. A cabin. Nice clothes. Groceries. Even the research. The shame wasn’t in discovering that she had a price; everyone had one of those. Maybe it was just in learning, so concretely, that this was what she cost.

AND YET
, no matter how earthshaking a moment is, there’s that minute right afterward when you return to the unconcerned world. Which is exactly what Adele experienced after she’d heard all the Dean had to say. She signed on for the work because there were no competing bids, then stepped out of Armageddon and onto a wooden staircase. Found that reality hadn’t shifted noticeably. Her bra still cut into her shoulders. She still stood five-foot-one.

Adele took the stairs one at a time. When she reached the bottom, she meant to sprint toward her cabin and finish off the pitcher of manhattans, one big gulp before the epic trip, but she couldn’t get around the man waiting for her down there. A myth stood in her way.

He overshadowed her. Not Lake. Too skinny. “Don’t moisten your panties,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s been known to happen the first time a lady meets me.”

“Meets who?” she asked.

“I’m Solomon Clay.”

She felt a wave of awe powerful enough to knock her down. But the guy seemed so pleased with himself that she refused to show it. Adele struggled to keep her balance and pressed one hand against the wall. Which made Solomon Clay laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “You know me.”

Solomon Clay extended his right hand as if it were the tip of a scepter. It was narrow, rough, gnarled; glorious and unnatural; as stirring as a rusted red bridge abandoned in the countryside; you see one and think, That thing will never fall.

He left the hand out there so long she wasn’t sure if he wanted her to kiss it or to bow. Finally, she forced herself to shake his hand, the least objectionable option.

Adele shivered with revulsion at the touch.

“Did I just give you a climax?” he asked with a smirk.

What kind of prophet was this?

As soon as he let go, she put her hand in her coat pocket. The fingers all but quivered, and she hated to think Solomon Clay read this as excitement. She felt tempted to explain everything about her ordeal in Paterson, New Jersey, just so he’d understand her reaction clearly. She’d give him answers that she’d denied her own mother if it would remove that gloating grin.

But before she could decide, Adele heard another sound in the long hall. A familiar voice. One she’d last heard in 1997. It wriggled across the stone floor. It curled up the length of her right thigh. It settled in the pocket between her upper thighs. She actually felt a weight press
against her pelvis. It reminded her of that gruesome weekend, the last time she’d been held tight.

You’re my special flower
.

But that whisper wasn’t real. It wasn’t. Was not. Only a memory activated by touch. Now her own hand, still in her coat pocket, felt as hot as an ember thrown from the flame.

“So you’re my shield bearer,” Solomon said.

“I’m what?” she asked. She hadn’t quite heard what he said because she was looking past Mr. Clay, peeking into the far corners, just in case. Just in case.

“You know the tradition? The shield bearer accompanies the veteran soldier into battle.”

“I thought we were Scholars.”

“Not in the field. Out there, think of yourself as my valet.”

Adele watched Solomon’s face. Did he know, even suspect, what the Dean had told her? He might be the legend, but she was the fail-safe. Solomon Clay seemed too confident to consider such a thing.

They walked along the hallway now. Past the guard’s desk and out the side door of the Washburn Library. Eventually it would be summer, the better of the three seasons there in the woods (rainy season being the third). In summer the wind would romp with the fallen leaves. Right now the snow simply pinned the whole world down.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“I came up in Chicago,” he said quickly.

“Then where’d you pick up all this shield bearer mess? Ancient Greece?”

“What’s wrong, woman? Are my big words confusing you?”

He sneered and looked down at her. He was a light-skinned black man. Her friends used to call them yellow-boys. Girls dated them and girls hated them, usually at the same time. Boys who’d been told they were beautiful only because of their complexion. They might have a face like a bullfrog’s balls, but with that golden skin they couldn’t fail. She loathed that deeply bred confidence. And, of course, she also envied it.

He walked her all the way to her cabin, and when they got there, she felt surprised they’d gone so far so quickly. She wasn’t tipsy anymore. Being insulted by this prick had sobered her right up. Big words, my ass.