The Caveman's Valentine (22 page)

The greater ghost looked around at the circle.

“Anybody else?”

Nobody said a word. They all looked to Chore where he lay crumpled up by the fire barrel.

Now the lesser ghost jerked his head toward Matthew.

The greater ghost spoke in that slow heavy voice. He said, “OK Matthew.”

Matthew moved. He spun out of his lawn chair, tried to run. But he was a weak and mourning sad-eyed weasel, and the big ghost took two steps and swung the chair leg and caught him where his neck met his skull. Matthew went down to his knees.

The ghost turned to the circle. “Is there anybody here didn’t like that?”

Nobody said a word.

“Where’s the videotape, Matthew?”

Matthew tried to rise. The ghost kicked him in the side, his boot coming up into the bottom of Matthew’s thorax, and they all heard a rib giving way. A moist splintering.

“Now, Matthew. Where’s the fucking tape?”

Matthew tried to speak and his breath heaved out of him. He clutched his side. He whispered: “I don’t have . . . no . . . tape.”

The ghost grabbed Matthew’s wrist. Yanked it hard and spun him around and started to bend Matthew’s arm in a way it wouldn’t bend.

“Did you give it to the Caveman, Matthew? Does the Caveman have it? Answer me.”

Matthew started to scream.

“Shut up.”

The ghost rammed the chair leg into Matthew’s sternum, and Matthew buckled up and the sound went out of his cry.

“If any of you got any problem with this, tell me now.”

There were no objections.

“Where’s the Caveman, asshole? Where’s his cave? Central Park?
Where,
Matthew?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t know any—”

The ghost grabbed Matthew by the hair. He smashed the butt end of his club into Matthew’s mouth and they heard the breaking of teeth and Matthew’s groan. The ghost let him go and Matthew’s face swooped down low to the grass, came up again. He looked to the circle, to the stony faces, and blood leaked out of his mouth and his eyes beseeched them. . . .

But nobody said a word until the ghost said quietly, “All right, let’s go.”

He dragged Matthew to his feet. He looked to the circle and the smaller ghost, the silent one, held the gun on them.

Said the big ghost, “How you folks doing? You having a good time?”

Nobody spoke.

The big ghost dragged Matthew closer to the circle. Raised the chair leg. Stood over Manuel.

“I SAID ARE YOU HAVING A GOOD TIME?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Lot of excitement?”

“Uh-uh. Same old.”

The silent ghost put the barrel of the pistol against Penny’s ear. He jerked his chin almost imperceptibly, and the big ghost spoke for him, asking her:

“What about your friend Matthew here? What
happened
to him anyway?”

Penny looked over at Matthew. At the blood oozing out of his mouth. Then she looked away.

“I don’t know, I ain’t seen him. Shit, I ain’t seen Matthew in quite a while.”

The no-face of the silent ghost moved slowly—he was checking out the faces in the circle. When he was satisfied that they all truly understood the value and honor of discretion, he gave the big ghost a nod.

The big ghost grabbed Matthew by his collar and dragged him out of the firelight.

“Let’s go, Matthew. Let’s go visit your buddy the Caveman.”

The silent ghost followed them, walking backward, his gun still on the circle. Then he turned, and quickly the ghosts half dragged and half walked Matthew to their sporty scarlet sedan parked by the fence, and shoved him in.

A
t the same hour, the passengers on the number 7 subway train coming in from Queens were staring at their newspapers or staring across the aisle at one another or staring at their thumbs. Or reading the frieze of wonderful ads. Hemorrhoids. Cockroaches. Anal warts. Lonely nights. Smoking’s ravages. AIDS. All the ads promised relief from these things, but where was the relief from these ads?

The train took them all under the river.

The door opened, and clashing and roaring came into the car till the door closed again. Some of the passengers looked up.

They saw a big black man wearing a moth-eaten coat and a saucepan for a hat. He had scratches all over his face. When he spoke, he did so in a composed voice that slowly drew everyone’s attention from their newspapers or bitter musings, a voice that brought all their eyes up, pair by pair, to meet his own. He said:

“Well, I don’t know if it’s the time of my life or just the season but I’ve never felt this way before. Lazy, you know, sort of contented but at the same time restless and longing for something—are you feeling this?

“Also
nostalgic
as hell.

“Lately I’ve been dreaming of North Carolina, where my family’s from. I’ve been remembering the fireflies in the sweetgums at the edge of the tobacco fields. I mean, the fireflies just load up those trees, you would not
believe.
Also I remember a hot day walking down to this little grocery store with my mother. And porches in the early evening. And the kind of music that is made on those porches, down in that country. Or that’s how it was when I was a boy, though I suppose that by now North Carolina is just one long curtain of McDonald’s and Popeye’s Chickens. But they
can’t
have vacuumed those fireflies out of the sweetgums—not
yet,
I don’t think.”

The subway arrived at Grand Central Station. The doors opened. A few got on, a few got off. The doors slid shut.

“I’ve never done much begging. In summer I live off food that I raise and gather in the park. In winter I scout the garbage cans. I’m not against begging, it’s a profession at least as honorable as, say, bankruptcy law, but when it gets to be a habit then I think it gets to be at least as ugly as bankruptcy law. You know what I’m saying?

“Anyway, I
am
begging now. I’m asking you to help me with bus fare to North Carolina. I want to go south, and I want to go tonight. I’d like to go and see the fireflies in the scrub back of McDonald’s, and more than that, there’s a man down there, a man who fled these parts, and I want to see what I can learn from him, and maybe what he tells me will teach me how to have the contentment without the restlessness.

“Fat chance, right?

“But anyway, you folks, if you take any foolish pity on such foolish desperation, you think you might help me out?”

He carried a Folger’s coffee can up and down the car. Many gave, and some who looked into his eyes as they dug into their pockets were later surprised at how generous they’d been. A few even gave him five-dollar bills. The beggar did not say “Thank you” to them, but he nodded and smiled.

Someone tried to give him a ten spot, but the beggar studied it and said, “Uh-uh. No sir. This thing has been steeped in Z-rays.”

He gave it back. The guy looked offended. The train stopped at Fifth Avenue, moved on. The guy tried to stuff the bill in the beggar’s pocket but the beggar swerved his hips away. The guy looked at the other passengers, searching for sympathy. He got none. The other passengers understood somehow that if you took tainted money, you were just asking for trouble.

The train arrived at Times Square, end of the line, and the beggar got out and started trudging up the stairs. One of the passengers, as he hurried past him, heard him muttering to himself, “Well, that’s enough, right? Isn’t that enough, for Christ’s sake? Can’t I go home now?”

I
n less than half an hour Romulus was back at the cave and stretched out on the mattress, and he had wrapped a blanket around himself and turned on the TV. A Monday Night Football game—the new spring league. He wedged a candle into a chink of stone above him, and lit it, and then pulled the Folger’s coffee can from his coat pocket and emptied the money onto the mattress. He started to count it, while he munched old pizza crusts from a plastic bag, while he kept one eye on the game.

Not a bad haul. The transit cops had chased him out of the subways only twice. Some of his pitches had fallen flat but some had soared.

He’d brought home six fives, forty-two ones, and such a weight of loose change as had distressed the seams of his pocket.

On TV, the football game was being played in the Roman Colosseum, which had been moved to the marsh flats of New Jersey and refurbished for the event. The teams were the New York/New Jersey Knights versus a legion of the Praetorian Guard from the time of the Emperor Caracalla.

If he weren’t so tired, Romulus thought, he’d leave now. Right now. He’d catch a late bus so that when morning came he’d already be in Virginia and he could be reborn into sudden spring. Just the sort of jolt . . . well. You never knew. With the right sort of jolt you might get the whole of your divinity fired up again.

But he was too sleepy to start packing now.

And despite the chill, though winter was coming back to get its last licks, his coats and his blanket were keeping him quite warm. And there was a fine football game on the tube, and he was counting away at his money, humming and counting as contentedly as any counting-house fool.

Home, the game, plenty of money, and pizza crusts to munch on. What could be sweeter?

He’d take off tomorrow.

T
he ghosts parked the car at a pier. There was a river, and a warehouse with peeling walls. The ghosts got out and stood by the hood of the car and consulted quietly. They left Matthew waiting inside the car.

Matthew clutched his bloody towel close to him as if it were a comforter, and he tried to think about something.

His pain came in waves and he thought if he could find something to think about, maybe he could hold off the next wave. But he couldn’t think of anything to think about except Scotty, and that was equal to or worse than the pain.

Outside, the silent ghost was saying something to the big one, and pointing at Matthew.

Then the pain welled up, and it wiped out the ghosts, and also the river and the warehouse, and Matthew passed out until the greater ghost slapped him awake again.

Now the ghosts were on either side of him in the backseat. The great ghost took the bloody towel and found a corner of it that wasn’t drenched in gore. He put his arm around Matthew’s shoulder. He drew Matthew’s head close to him and held it in the crook of his elbow and spit on the towel and wiped Matthew’s face with it. Like Matthew’s mother used to do.

He said, “So you don’t know nothing about no videotape?”

“No . . .”

“And you got nothing to tell us about the Caveman?”

“Don’t . . . I don’t . . . You stay away from the Caveman. His daughter . . . his daughter’s a cop.”

“Ooh. I bet she just loves the fucking deadbeat.”

“She . . . they’re close. She wouldn’t let nothing happen to him.”

“Oh yeah? So what’s
her
name?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? That’s a dumb name. Where’s this nothing live?”

“I don’t. I . . . just don’t . . .”

“Hey, that’s OK, Matthew. But my colleague here, he wants to see the Caveman real bad. Wants some action, wants some fun. What’s to fucking do here, while we wait for you, Matthew? We’re bored. What are we going to do for kicks?”

The ghost had scrubbed Matthew’s cheek to his satisfaction, and now he brought his face down low. Matthew looked up and the ghost’s no-face was just an inch above his. He could smell the garlic on the ghost’s breath, leaching through the gauzy bandage.

“Maybe,” the ghost said, “he could draw a picture. Maybe my friend could draw a picture on your
face.
Is that OK?”

“On my—”

“Like a tattoo, Matthew. Right here. On your cheek where everybody can see it.”

Matthew tried to squirm away but the arm held him securely against the ghost’s breast.

Then he felt the fingers of the silent ghost. Felt them stroking his cheek. Long, gentle exploring strokes, like the strokes of a lover. The silent ghost opened a penknife. He put the blade against Matthew’s cheek, and Matthew felt its coolness.

Said the greater ghost, “My colleague is an
artist,
Matthew. He’ll do you a nice tattoo, for free. A tree, a big spreading tree, all over one side of your face—you like that? He don’t have good tools, that’s the problem. But then, he won’t charge you nothing.”

Matthew tried to cry out. The greater ghost made a wad of the towel and shoved it into his mouth.

“What was that? Was that a
yes,
Matthew? All right, we’ll say it’s a
yes, please carve a beautiful tree on my face.
Or, you could tell us where the videotape is.”

Matthew tried to shake his head. His head wouldn’t move.

“Or we could make it even simpler for you, Matthew. Just show us where the Caveman lives. That’s all. It’s so easy. You want me to take the towel out now? You got something to say?”

The greater ghost drew the towel out of Matthew’s mouth. A pair of teeth came with it. The ghost opened his window and shook the teeth out onto the lot.

“OK Matthew?”

Matthew didn’t speak.

“Oh shit. He’s still fucking around. Better get started.” He put the towel back in Matthew’s mouth.

The silent ghost came close and raised the knife.

Matthew strained to look straight down. To the point near his chin where the knife was starting to work.

Said the big ghost, “One good thing, Matthew, is now nobody’ll ever have to see your ugly face no more. They’ll just see this big scar that looks like a tree, and they’ll say, hey that fucker is a work of art.”

Brisk crosshatching of tiny cuts, climbing up his cheek. Another wave of pain welled up and he tried to ride it but it washed over him, he was shrieking into the towel and tumbling end over end in the belly of that pain and then the towel came out again and he heard himself saying, “Inwood . . .”

“What was that?”

“Inwood Park, I’ll show you. Cave. His cave’s in Inwood . . . I’ll show you. I’ll show you. His daughter’s name is Lulu. Here . . . here . . . her address.”

He handed over the little piece of paper Romulus had given him.