Big Machine (6 page)

Euphinia and Grace were standing exactly where they’d been sitting the night before. Absently they watched the spot where our table had been. It was difficult to make the transition this morning. And not just for me. Peach Tree and Sunny hovered near the socket where they’d plugged in the serving cart.

“Don’t be afraid,” Lake said. He kept his voice gentle, but I knew how loud it could get. He hadn’t been so demure while pulling that tree.

Grace said, “Nobody here is scared.”

But she held Euphinia’s hand tightly.

Lake said, “Then let me show you the rest of the Library.”

Lake turned and walked two steps, but we didn’t move. He sensed this and turned back. He didn’t need to ask the question, only waited for one of us to answer it.

Violet was the one who spoke for us. She cleared her throat, tilted her head away.

“Where’s the Dean?”

Lake waved us toward him. The man’s hand looked as big as a boogie
board. I couldn’t have been the only one who thought he was going to swat our heads off. But when we didn’t move, he didn’t beg, only waited, and soon each of us stepped closer. Violet and Verdelle first. Then Euphinia and Grace. I beat Peach Tree and Sunny over there, but it was only out of pride. I wasn’t going to be the last one again.

Lake only seemed more enormous indoors. If it had started raining, we could’ve gathered under him for shelter. But instead of projecting menace the big man seemed serene. Another person might’ve been insulted by what Violet had said, but Lake smiled peaceably.

Now we all stood at the bottom of the stairs the Dean had used the night before. Wooden steps, simple and clean. At the top of the stairs, a closed door.

Lake pointed up. “Every year the new Scholars expect the Dean to step out that door and give them the tour himself. But let me tell you something about the Dean, he’s … unavailable. You’re not going to see him again.”

Euphinia brought her hand to her neck. “Ever?”

She asked it like she suspected Lake had eaten the little man in the night, a morsel before bedding down.

“Not for some time,” Lake said.

“How long?” I asked.

“That really depends on you. On how well you do your work.”

Now we, as a group, moved toward the stairs, like we were going to run up there and turn the knob and just beg the Dean for answers. But Lake stuck his arm out, blocking the way between us and the ascent. I have to say, even with Sunny and Peach Tree on our side, I didn’t think all seven of us could take him.

He said, “You do your work and do it well. The Dean takes notice. Then, when
he
decides the time is right, he calls you up to see him.”

Verdelle came the closest to Lake’s eye-line, though still a good nine inches shorter. She looked up at Lake, her shoulders pulled back in defiance. “And then what will he say?”

Lake snorted, and for the first time he didn’t seem so composed.

“Think I know? I’ve
never
been invited up.”

And that’s what did it. Broke our trance. Lake wasn’t lying. He’d been snubbed for who knows how many years. Decades? And you could hear the humiliation in his voice. Admitting this made it harder to treat Lake like an enemy.

He said, “Can we start the tour now?”

“How come you took us through a side entrance?” I asked. It came out sounding accusatory, I’m sure, but the others must’ve been wondering too.

Lake shrugged his enormous shoulders. “That door is just closest to your cabins.”

Now he turned, and we followed. But before going, each of us stole one last look at the staircase and the closed door at the top. I made odds, in my head, about who would be “called up.” In what order. And I wasn’t the only one. Even Euphinia and Grace let go of each other’s hands. You could see the calculations on every grave face.

Lake took us forward, but the day was kind of a loss. No matter where our bodies were led, we remained at the foot of those wooden stairs.

WE FINISHED
with our first full day, an orientation that left us all disoriented, and then we gathered in front of our cabins in the evening light. I’m talking northeast Vermont in winter, cold enough to cause frostbite, but no one invited the others home. Too soon for that. So we stood in a close circle in the snow. Wind slapped our backs and shoulders, tore through our cheap coats and threadbare scarves, it scraped any exposed skin.

What were we discussing? The Dean, of course. His disappearance still bothered us. While we appreciated Lake’s time, it didn’t soothe the feeling that we’d been dismissed. Disrespected. But as I shivered, I could see we’d already changed a little, the seven of us that morning weren’t quite the seven of us tonight. If the Dean showed up now, we would’ve barked our complaints, but earlier today, in the banquet room, we’d clung to the walls like frightened puppies. And suddenly I felt happy he hadn’t showed up.

People like us, poor folks I mean, we’re wise in some ways but in others we act like children. We can be a pretty docile bunch. I know you’re not supposed to say that, but for proof just go to any hospital emergency room in a broke neighborhood, I’m talking anywhere. We slump and slouch for hours as we wait to be seen by a nurse practitioner, and a trained doctor is as rare as health benefits at our jobs. It might take us five or six hours just to get some antibiotics, and the only way we’re going to get seen any faster is if we’ve been filled with bullets. Even then it’s going to take an hour.

We sit through treatment like that in hospitals and banks, at supermarkets and check cashing stores. No matter where you go, the poor have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve.

The picture of the poor is usually of one wild, chaotic lot. Loud, combative, quick to complain, but that isn’t so, not in my experience. Just dip into that emergency room and watch every tired face; we’ve been
there for half a day and have yet to receive treatment. Most will only heave and sigh, that’s the extent of our rebellion. The poor are poor and we expect to stay that way. We don’t like it, but what can you do? That’s our attitude. The poor aren’t defeated, we’re domesticated. If the Dean had given us that tour, we simply would’ve become his pets. Disappearing was really the kindest thing he could’ve done. It forced us to face an important question. Would we flounder without his guidance, or would we step up?

I REFUSED
to be the last one up and out for a second day. Lake had knocked on my door at eight, so the next morning I woke at six. Showered, fed myself, and ironed my clothes twice. I had to do it twice because, well, I hadn’t brought that much with me and I was already recycling the pants I’d worn to the banquet. Even after two passes, I could see wrinkles here and there.

By seven-thirty I sat near the front door just waiting to hear Lake’s boots clomping through the snow. I planned to pop the door open just as he arrived, surprise him with my punctuality. But as the hour approached, I didn’t hear his heavy steps, only the chatter of birds and wind rapping at my walls. Finally I just opened the front door; it wasn’t quite eight but close enough. I stepped out, and who should be doing the same thing? Violet. Coming out of cabin three. The others as well, only moments after.

WE PASSED THE FRONT DESK
. Behind it sat a new young, disinterested white guard. He paid more attention to his acne than to us, picking at a mob of pimples on his forehead. Then we moved, as a pack, through the banquet room. The Dean’s stairs still filled us with curiosity and a charge, but we didn’t linger this time. We wouldn’t reach his door with wishful thinking.

Now we walked a long hallway, fifty yards at least. These were the staff offices. Rooms filled with women we’d met the day before, employed
to refill our office supplies, deal with the Library’s daily operation. But they weren’t Unlikely Scholars. Lake had made that clear. They were folks hired out of the local pool, from towns like St. Johns-bury Littleton, or Haverhill. The guards and office staff didn’t seem quite as intoxicated with their roles as we already were with ours. While this place offered resurrection to the Unlikely Scholars, it only provided these white kids with a living wage.

We passed their offices quietly. All their doors were shut, and the office walls were made of opaque glass. We could see shapes behind them, more like gray ghosts than human bodies. Even on Sunday a few staff members worked. We were here, so they were here.

We continued on.

This long hallway finally ended at the bottom of a steep staircase. I’m not talking about some understated wooden deal like the Dean’s. These marble stairs went up three stories high and were the color of oyster shells. They reminded me of the Grand Staircase inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And we had to climb them to reach our offices.

Some of us were better at it than others. Violet, Verdelle, Peach Tree, and Sunny went fast, giddy as children. Their boot steps sounded like the beating of a thousand drums. Euphinia, Grace, and I took longer.

My problem was my lower right leg. Climbing that many stairs made my knee feel like it had expanded under the skin, grown as big as a soft-ball. My shin felt so cold now, more frigid than a Vermont blizzard. And last I dragged my foot up. It had gone completely numb. I only knew it was there because of its weight pulling at my swollen knee. I hadn’t always been crippled like this, only since 2002. After Cedar Rapids I couldn’t spend too much time on my feet. Soon into the climb I started to limp.

Taking it so slow did allow me to really appreciate the staircase, though. Marble, yes, and ten feet wide. The handrails were carved from the same stone. There were speckles in it that caught the light so it seemed to flicker and glow. The climb felt like an ascent into Valhalla. At the top I rested my numb leg. No more steps up, so now my gaze drew down.

Into Scholar’s Hall.

The day before, Lake stopped us here to ask if the layout of the Library seemed familiar. The long passageway we’d walked through and now Scholar’s Hall, which was shaped like an oval. Another long wing sat on the other side of Scholar’s Hall. That’s where our offices lay.

No one came up with the answer, so Lake finally just told us.

The Washburn Library was laid out like the White House.

Scholar’s Hall sat where the Oval Office would be.

Now at the top I crossed over the rim. On the other side another set of grand marble stairs led into the Hall. We went down those steps like miners entering a quarry.

At the bottom we marched past row upon row of enormous cedar bookshelves. Most of them full. The notes of past Scholars, those men and women who’d posed for the photos in the lobby, were all filed here. These shelves contained more than two hundred years’ worth of their learning. The smell of the wooden shelves blended with the thousands of pages, and it created a comforting mustiness.

We moved across the maroon tiled floor of Scholar’s Hall, walking so lightly that our boots barely scuffed. There were enormous picture windows at the top of the chamber, but the sunlight didn’t quite reach the ground, so it felt cold down where we were. If some of the records were more than two hundred years old, then many of the Scholars were long dead. Walking among the volumes felt like a trip through a mausoleum.

Grace said, “Forget what Lake said yesterday, all that White House mess. I’ll tell you what the Library reminds me of. Eddie Anderson and Jack Benny.”

A statement that left at least five of us thoroughly mystified. Grace had hardly said a damn word in two days, and this was how she chose to break her silence? With gibberish?

Euphinia tapped Grace’s arm lightly and said, “I see.”

Peach Tree said, “Well, we don’t.”

Euphinia frowned at Peach Tree. “There’s a story about how Eddie Anderson got rich playing Rochester van Jones on the old
Jack Benny Program
, and with that money he built a mansion for him and his wife right in the middle of Compton.”

“So?”

Euphinia wiggled her nose dismissively at Sunny.
“So
his mansion was an exact replica of the one Jack Benny owned in Beverly Hills.”

Peach Tree laughed, and it echoed through Scholar’s Hall. “So you’re saying that old bootlicking Negro loved his
boss
that much?”

Grace balled both hands into small, soft fists and shook them at Peach Tree. “You think that’s the point, you damn water-head?”

“Well, what’s the point, then?” he shouted.

Euphinia whispered, “We can have what anyone else can have.”

We reached the far stairs. I had one hand on the railing in case I wobbled. Euphinia and Grace helped each other move up, stepping ahead in tandem. Even the youngest of us, Violet and Verdelle, moved slowly now. I replayed Euphinia’s words in my head as we hit the top and went over the other side. One more set of grand stairs down. Into the last long hallway. Our hallway. Where radiators hissed in our offices.

Our offices were in the storefront style, just like the staff’s. But unlike theirs our glass walls were clear. As you walked along, you could peek inside each room. Sounds like a display at a museum or zoo, but I didn’t take it that way. The glass walls looked elegant. And the real benefit of them was that you couldn’t sit around your office digging your nose or taking a nap. Anyone who’s ever held a job knows how much of your day gets wasted that way. But now those habits had to go. There are benefits to shame in small doses.

Before stepping into our offices, we completed our quiet walk, marching to the very end of the long hallway. An enormous print hung in a gold frame on the northernmost wall. The day before, Lake had suggested that our work would start today. He didn’t tell us what that work would be. But he did tell us about the painting.

“This is by Caravaggio,” Lake had explained. “Jerome. Patron saint of scholars.”

In the painting Saint Jerome has no halo around his head. Only a cardinal’s red hat in the background suggests his holiness. It’s easy to miss. The old man wears a robe around his waist and legs, but his upper body is naked. He leans forward while writing at his desk, and for company there’s only an unlit candle, a crucifix, and a bleached skull. Jerome sits on a bed while he works, and the brightest texture in the room is his robe, the color of fire apples. He looks exhausted but in a state of frenzy. The man is lost in the mania of his calling.