Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea (10 page)

The attendants talked quietly to each other. One swung a set of keys from a black lanyard. The other was making a case for the Phillies, arguing that this could be a playoff year. The key swinger seemed unimpressed. When Rachel approached, they both straightened up.

“I'm looking for someone who operates this ride,” she said. “A black guy, but light-skinned. Real thin.”

“What's his name?” the key swinger asked.

“I don't know.”

“How many black guys work here?” the Phillies fan asked. “It's got to be Leonard. You mean Leonard?” He pillowed an aura of empty space around his head. “Crazy hair?”

“Yeah, that's him.” That was pretty much all she remembered. Skinny black guy with a lot of hair. Otherwise, a blur. Rachel didn't think it was much to go on, but she suspected it would be enough. There just weren't that many black kids employed on the boardwalk.

“He doesn't work here anymore,” Key Swinger said. He drew the blade of his hand across his throat. “Gonzo. Out.”

“Did he quit?” Rachel asked.

“Well,” Phillies Fan said, shifting his weight and looking over Rachel's head, a seasoned ranger reading the horizon, “I believe he was highly encouraged to quit.”

“Why?”

Key Swinger gave his colleague a warning look. “He's gone,” he said sharply, “and that's all we know.”

“That's all we can say,” added Phillies Fan.

“Know where he went?”

“No.”

“Does anybody else who works here know?”

“No,” said Key Swinger, who turned his attention to his colleague, poking his shoulder. “We got to get back to work.”

Looking left and right, Rachel confirmed that she was alone. She put her hand over her eyes, surveying a crowd that wasn't there. “Yeah,” she said. “You can't keep all these good people waiting.”

Phillies Fan laughed. But Key Swinger turned his back to face the controls, signaling the end of the conversation. Phillies Fan stopped laughing, then made a low and discreet wave of his fingers, like a catcher behind home plate, that pointed to a line of porta-johns under the flume ride.

Rachel played along, nodding back. As she walked toward the flume, she heard Phillies Fan ask for coverage. “I have to use the head, man.”

“Make it quick,” Key Swinger said. “Stone likes to see two people here.”

Rachel, planting herself at the far end of the line of porta-johns, admired the attendant's caution; from where she stood, they wouldn't be seen from the coaster. She didn't have to wait long.

“About Leonard,” Phillies Fan said, keeping his voice low. “Lots of us think he got a raw deal.”

“What do you mean?”

Phillies Fan stuck his hands into his pants pockets. “Some shit happened, and he caught a lot of the blame. Maybe all of it.”

“What happened?”

“I can't really talk about it,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Though that's all people are talking about.” He jerked his head toward the roller coaster. “Last year. Toward the end of the season. A retarded kid fell off the ride. Probably got too excited and tried standing when he shouldn't have.” He made a diving motion with his hand. “You hear about it?”

“No,” Rachel said, looking at his feet. He wore plaid canvas high-tops. Stupid shoes, she thought. Just plain stupid.

“This town is better at keeping secrets than I thought,” he said.

“You know where Leonard is?”

“Maybe,” Phillies Fan said.

“Please.”

Whether he was in a hurry to get back to his station or he'd just gotten bored being coy, Rachel couldn't say. But he released the information he had. “There's a go-cart place. Not the one by Pirate's Playground. Downtown. At the old train station. You know it?”

“I've passed it,” Rachel said.

“I'd look there.” Phillies Fan spat on the ground. “It's one of the few places Stone doesn't own.”

*   *   *

A desert of asphalt heat, Sea Town's middle blocks sat stranded in still air, unrefreshed by the ocean breezes from the east or inland winds off the bay on the island's west side. Here were all the necessary things that made the dreamy things possible. Filling stations. Convenience stores. A fenced-in lot of squat, green transformers that seemed to groan in their beds of crushed rock.

The old train depot lay thickset and Victorian just past the electricity substation. Before Rachel saw the go-carts, she heard them, a chorus of shrill, lawn-mower whines. Above the Gothic filigree of the old station's entrance gable, a faded wooden sign said,
SEASWIFT GO-CARTS.
The office filled a tiny space no bigger than a closet where the ticket window once had been; the remaining space was sealed off, most of the windows covered in plywood hastily painted to match the mud-brown clapboards and trim of the station. A beetle-green bicycle leaned against the wall.

“Is Leonard here?” Rachel asked at the window. Inside, seated in a desk chair too small for his bulk, a fat teen with wire-frame glasses worked a Game Boy in his hands.

“On the track,” he said without looking up.

An otherwise simple oval, the raceway was pinched in the middle to break the monotony, with an island of old tires at its center and a starting line at one side where waiting go-carts idled in the heat. Business was no busier here than at Happy World; there were only two carts on the track. One was raced by a white boy about nine or ten years old, who drove with his shoulders to the wheel and his tongue in the side of his mouth. The other driver had to be Leonard; he drove with one hand on the wheel, his elbow lounging on the side of the cart. He seemed intent on letting the boy stay just ahead of him. But when the boy turned around, Leonard put both hands to the wheel and made a show of determined effort. The boy laughed ruthlessly.

After a few more laps, the engines died, and the drivers coasted back to the starting line. Leonard stepped out first, withdrawing legs that seemed impossibly long for the tiny cart. He helped the boy get out. It looked like a familiar routine; Leonard extended his hand, and almost without looking, the boy grabbed it and let himself be pulled forward as he stepped over the cart's side.

“See you tomorrow?” Leonard asked.

“Probably,” said the boy.

“C'mon,” said Leonard. “Definitely.”

“Probably.”

“We'll see,” said Leonard. He watched the boy walk to his bike, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket
—
a Hawaiian short-sleeve dominated by broad, ruby flowers. He replaced them when he saw Rachel. “He comes every day,” he said, walking toward her. “Or at least every day I'm here.” He gave Rachel an appraising look, as if she were an exotic species that had strayed beyond its natural habitat. “You want to ride?” he asked.

“No,” Rachel said.

“I didn't think so,” Leonard said. He pointed to his shirt pocket. “Mind?”

“Go right ahead.” Leonard smelled of exhaust fumes and gasoline, not a promising context for striking a match. As he lit his cigarette, Rachel took a precautionary step back. There was something courtly about him, the air of a nineteenth-century country squire, but he couldn't have been much older than eighteen or nineteen. The dissonance puzzled her.

Leonard plopped down on a bench behind them, which, like everything else at the SeaSwift, seemed knocked together with whatever was at hand, in this case, a few painted two-by-fours on aluminum poles set into asphalt, without a back to lean upon.

“You're pale,” Leonard said, pulling a drag from his cigarette. “No, wait, that's not right. The proper word is
fair.
Pardon me
—
you're fair.”

“You had it right the first time,” Rachel said, sitting down. “I'm pale.”

“That don't bother you?”

“I don't like the sun.”

“Cancer,” Leonard said knowingly, staring down his cigarette
—
a schoolteacher eyeballing a mischievous pupil.

“No. I just don't like the feel of it.”

“I guess you're fond of the dark?”

Rachel shrugged. “Not especially.”

“Well, then,” Leonard said, stretching his legs. “That puts you in a difficult spot. Until someone invents a time that isn't day or night.”

A light breeze swept over the track, stirring discarded ticket stubs, and Rachel smelled gas again, even more distinctly. She shifted farther down the bench, away from Leonard and his lit cigarette.

“What's the matter?” Leonard asked.

“I think you spilled gasoline,” Rachel said.

Leonard lifted a knee to his face and wrinkled his nose. “I can't even smell it anymore,” he said. Then he leaned over toward Rachel and sniffed. “You smell like buttered popcorn.”

She leaned away from him, surprised, an involuntary tango partner. People just didn't go around sniffing other people, breaking the invisible buffers that kept strangers strangers. But against the urge to push him away, she remembered her need to pull for information. And besides, she thought, admiring his tumult of hair, he was kind of interesting. “I was just at Happy World,” she said, shifting herself upright.

“I thought you didn't care for rides.”

“I don't,” Rachel said.

“Thought so. You must be a true townie. You live here long enough, and you don't care about sun, surf, rides, or the rest of it. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking with it. If I never see a gull again, I'll die a happy man.” He blew a stream of smoke from his nose.

A voice yelled out from the ticket office. “Hey, Leonard, whatcha doing?”

Leonard held his cigarette poised in midair, as if posing for a publicity still. “I'm attending to a customer,” he said.

“I don't hear any motors running.”

“She doesn't like the noise. I'm pushing her around the track.”

“For God's sake. Just don't be goofing off. And don't let me catch you smoking.”

“Wouldn't think of it,” Leonard said, taking another drag.

“Is he the boss?” Rachel asked

“He likes to think so.” Leonard shook his head, amused by his thoughts. “The Island of Misfit Toys.”

“What?”

“You know. Rudolph?” Leonard pointed to his face. “With the nose so bright? Guiding Santa's sleigh? The island Rudolph visits with the elf who wants to be a dentist. Man, that's whacked. Who the hell
wants
to be a dentist, right?” He balanced his palms in the air. “Pulling teeth? Making toys? Toys win every time.”

“I get Rudolph,” Rachel said. “But why is this the misfit island?”
Any more than Pirate's Playground or Happy World or any other place on the boardwalk—or in Sea Town
, Rachel thought.

“Rejects,” Leonard said, grinding his cigarette stub under the toe of his shoe, an ankle-high work boot stained with grease. “It's where people go when Bobby Stone doesn't want them anywhere else.”

There was a rattle of glass and steel. By the ticket office, a seagull perched at the edge of a trash barrel, picking through the garbage. Leonard found a small chunk of broken asphalt and chucked it at the barrel. The clang startled the gull, who flew up with an ugly caw of protest. Leonard looked at Rachel carefully, more closely than made her comfortable. She drew her legs under her.

“You got a name?” he asked.

“Rachel.”

“Just Rachel? Folks couldn't afford to give you a last name?”

“Leary. Rachel Leary.”

Leonard pulled at his ear. “Leary. Leary. I'm Leonard. Leonard Washington Washington.”

Rachel shook his hand, a slender hand with long fingers, like a piano player. She gave him a firm shake, because she hated a dead-fish handshake herself. He returned a firm grip.

“Well?”

“What?”

“Aren't you going to ask?”

“Ask what?”

“You meet a man named Washington Washington, and you're not curious? You don't want to know why he has the same name twice? This is something you see every day?”

“Okay,” Rachel said. Despite herself, she started to smile, which felt alien to her. It had been a long time.

Leonard shook his head. “No, not okay,” he said playfully, gripping the bench by the edge and gazing out over the track. “Uh-uh. You got to do better than that.”

“Please,” she said. “C'mon. What's the story?”

“Okay.” Leonard turned to her. “But are you ready for this? There are some things you just have to be ready for.”

“I'm as ready as I'll ever be.”

“Fair enough. My father's name was Washington. So that's one Washington. And then my mom, she swears her family is descended from
the
Washington, you know, first president, dollar bills, cherry tree? And she just couldn't bear to leave her family out of my name. Pride. She's a proud woman. So my dad's Washington wasn't good enough. She had to add her own Washington. Or there wouldn't be any peace.”

“Was there peace?”

“Wouldn't know,” Leonard said, lighting another cigarette. “My daddy left before I was old enough to remember him.”

While they talked, the sun steadily declined, drawing mustard streaks on the scudding clouds. “So,” Leonard said, “why do I have the pleasure of meeting Rachel Leary this evening?”

“Well,” Rachel said, gathering up her courage, “it's about the accident.”

“What accident?”

“At Happy World. Last year.”

“What makes you think I know anything about it?”

“I was there,” Rachel said, “and you were there too.”

There were creases on either side of Leonard's mouth. When he smiled, they gave him an angelic look. But when he stopped smiling
—
and he had stopped smiling
—
they made him look years older than he could possibly be, as if at any moment he could take off his young man mask and surprise the world with an elderly gentleman waiting underneath.