Jack Womack, page 10
5
“GET YOUR FLYERS SET, LUTHER,” SAID DOC, MIDTUNNEL. SO glaringly white the lights within glowed that I felt to be speeding through a fluorescent tube. “Friday night, so they’ll still have the watch up. Hey, Jake!”
Jake, deaf to normal call, softly serenaded himself, eyes lidhid from this world’s grotesqueries, ears pitched sole to history’s song. Oktobriana fastened limpetlike onto his slumped shoulder, sleeping safely unaware. As if by instinct he stroked her face, brushing her skin’s canvas with new color. Under music’s influence, I fancied, mayhap Jake’s soul returned; heretofore to my sight in his life’s art he brought to his palette no hue save red.
“Jake!”
“Don’t scream,” he muttered, de-earing his phones, moving nothing else; I relaxed minuteslong.
“You hear better without that deaf-aid than you do with it, Jake. We’re coming into town, friend. Better look sharp.”
“Doc,” I said, “translate flyers. I’m uncertain.”
“Oh, you know. Your pass papers. Get ’em handy.”
“Pass what?” Giving suitable ear impossibled when such unfathomed slang proposed to cue. By my incomprehension, anger’s cloud shaded his face, though his temper’s worst kept at deep run; his wheel grip tightened and his knuckles paled as blood drained from hands to head.
“Your pass papers,” he repeated. “You don’t have them on you?”
“Haven’t them at all,” I said. “What’s meant?”
His voice’s organ loosed all stops. “Buncha damn lulus, you are,” he said. “You know that? All of you just follow my lead, then, till we get through. You especially.” With pointing finger he emphasized my attention’s need. “Let me do the talking. I think I can pull the wool over their eyes.” Dehatting himself he topsided his brim onto my head, rubbing clotted wounds raw. It settled upon my ears, rather than skull. “Good thing you got a small head. Now keep that yanked down low. They get a good look at your bean and they’ll want to know who went down for the count.”
“Who’re they who await?” Jake asked, his voice dawn-calm.
“Police,” said Doc, emphasizing syllables oddly. “Keep your traps shut. Less they hear, the better. Any luck at all and I’ll know the ones checking.”
As if awakening from a midnight dream we entered the city, moving onto Dyer Avenue’s stretch as it funneled us to Forty-second. Scattered over the dusty lots alongstreet were boxes roped together, cars’ rusting frames, a bedouin’s camp of patched tents.
“Burnt out this Hooverville a month ago and now ever’body’s back,” said Doc, referring—I gathered—to the settlement around us. Long bundles lay in rows as if set out for survivors’ identification. Looking closely, I saw the bundles stirring, thrashed by dreams as they were by life. Glimpses of river flashed between cartonlike buildings to our left. Down at waterside, beyond a highrise road, darknesses rose which could, by their form, have only been ships. On the right, past the refugees, Ninth Avenue’s unrenovated tenements showed only their worn facades’ cornices and boarded stores. Down avenue’s midlane stood a row of metal trees. Along its unified branches entwined above a train snaked uptown. Blocks away stood some few recognizables: the Empire State, Chrysler’s tickler, Dryco’s old slab, now as it once had been, RCA’s. In the sky above, so much broader than in our day, there seemed to be stars.
“Shit,” said Doc, eyeing frontways. “We’re in the soup now. Don’t start gumbeatin’ about anything. Got me?” A twin-bulbed streetlamp at Forty-second’s corner burnished two cars’ smooth black hulls with pale gold; upon their roofs red spots revolved, throwing bloodlight. “Jive’s on,” he said, his whisper closer to ventriloquist’s mumble. “Hope I can bamboozle these clowns.”
We stopped and idled. The policeman ambling our way radiated vulnerable danger. Moon white, barrel broad, over two meters tall, he wore an unplated cloth cap and dark uniform bejeweled with silvered buttons. His sole tools were pistol and club; the bovine look his face held suggested that their use came naturally to him. His like usually bagged it homeways by first week’s end in my old field. Tapping carside with his club, he reclined, resting elbows roofways until we answered. Doc, flashing three gold teeth in his smile, rolled down his window.
“Headin’ somewhere, boy?” the policeman asked, peering in; his grin drew up as if by poison. “Hard t’see y’in the dark, Doc. How’re y’doin’?”
“Fine, officer. Doin’ just fine, sir,” Doc laughed. His proper speak came earlier in phlegmful baritone’s range; wording to the policeman he ascended uptone an octave, cloaking threat with callow sound, blatant in desiring to do naught but please. They behaved as if by stagecraft, for some unimaginable audition. He drew a paper from his wallet and gave it over; the policeman shone his flash over it. “Been over to East Orange, sir. Ever’ Friday night, you know. That hospital work never do let up.”
“Who y’got with you?” the policeman asked, blinding us with his beam’s sharp light. “Patients?”
Doc slapped me shoulderways, arousing pain—his intent, undoubted. “Yes, sir, mister officer. That’s a good one. Patients!” He laughed a near-psychotic laugh that could have curdled cream. “This here’s my cousin Luther,” he said, whacking me again. “Had’m gimme a hand over there this evenin’, sir. They made him work the smallpox ward.”
“Smallpox,” he repeated, slowly. “He can just sit right there, then. Those aren’t patients in the back. Who’re they?”
“Doctor Jake,” said Doc, whose ease with plot impressed, “and his—uh—nurse. Once a week he comes in to keep a eye on us, sir.”
“Make sure y’don’t cut off th’ wrong legs?”
Doc’s grip wheelways, during his latest laughing fit, so tightened that I thought he might snap it in two. “It’s a tricky kinda situation, officer. See, they both live in town here but they don’t live together, if you get my drift.”
“I get it.”
“Well, they was celebratin’ after they got off their shift, see, and I think they celebrated more’n they intended—”
“Look like they was fuckin’ in a swamp,” he said. “What’s their problem?”
Doc leaned farther out, looking about as if the conspiracy was set to blow. “Blotto.”
“That so?” the policeman said, keeping his light level on them.
“As worded, pokerboy,” said Jake. “Dim the blinder pronto.” My muscles seized, and I’m sure Doc’s did as well; the policeman only returned Doc’s papers.
“He’s had a lotta trouble with the wife, sir—”
“Get outta here ’fore I slap ’em in the drunk tank.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Doc, nodding as if thankful for treats bestowed. He repocketed his essential before I could glimpse it. “Have yourself a good evenin’, sir.”
Without warning the policeman clubbed the sideview; mirror shards chimed onto the concrete as if tossed by the wind. “You’ll get a ticket for that,” he laughed. “Better get it fixed.”
“Thanks again,” said Doc, liptight. Aglow with moment’s satisfaction, the policeman returned to his car, heels clicking the pavement, gun and club bumping like pendulous tumors against his thickened hips. We slunk past the feeble barricade onto Forty-second. Once distanced, Doc beat the door with his hand; his voice roared into true range.
“Flatfoot mick motherfucker,” he shouted, unmindful of listening ears. “Cost me ten bucks to fix that shit. Sonovabitch bastard.”
“That was unreasoned action,” I agreed.
“Unreason, hell. No reason. No fuckin’ reason at all,” he continued. “Goddamn mick cops. Ever’ goddamn one of ’em on the fuckin’ take. All they do is give poor folks bullshit. Gets me steamed.”
“Would a report be fileable?” I asked; ombudspeople lend distraction if little else. Doc didn’t answer. We rattled over Forty-second’s cobbled epidermis, banging across asphalt-bandaged lacerations. Streetlamps’ blurred halos hung in the dark, showing as angels’ crowns, their wearers held frozen by proximity to earth. In the centerlane ran streetcar rails, like those in Moscow or in the Bronx, our Bronx; none hummed by before we turned north onto Tenth. Doc swerved round a wooden-wheeled cart easing upstreet; passing, I noted horsepower. The beast’s splintered hooves, mired full, supported its spine-sprung carcass; the cart it dragged bore sidewalls armored with heavy, battered pans and pots, holding it secure from informal assault. When we paused at a stop I looked above two small shops with French names; two billboards hid the building’s flank. One said HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA/PE6-5000; the other:
Opens August 17 at the Capitol Theatre
THE WIZARD OF OZ/starring/JUDY GARLAND/RAY BOLGER/BERT LAHR
and
W. C. FIELDS as the Wizard.
When I looked again we’d driven on; it was gone.
“This is city of New York?” Oktobriana said, her voice startling us all. Jake had removed his phones, and studied all with open eye. He nodded, taking his hand from her face. As her sense returned, Jake drew away from her as would a mimosa from fingertouch; resettling, she pressed nearer as he inched off. When she’d sandwiched him between door and self she burrowed into his embrace; his face waxed over with seeming unawareness.
“How you doing, miss?” Doc asked. “Khorosho?”
“Da,” she said, acknowledging his dreadfully pronounced Russian. “I noted situation after occurrence. Mild concussion without fracture or hemorrhage. No internal trauma. Swelling on left radia infers possible bonecrack—”
“Miss, you’re in shock,” Doc said. “Where’d you learn to diagnose?” he asked, laughing.
“Moscow,” she said. “Any fool could diagnose.”
“Doc,” I interrupted. “That paper you flashed. That’s a flyer?”
“That’s it,” he said; his struggles to control unwise wording showed plain. “You from Mars, man?” Depocketed once more, he gave it over; unfolding, I read. His grace came on Interior Department letterhead: the paper was much finer than that used for our cash; the Great Seal’s engraving appeared drawn by master’s hand, such detail it held, unlike our government’s standard design of singleline eagle’s profile.
Norman Quarles is to be allowed unhindered transit between the state lines of New York and New Jersey from the period Nov. 1 1938 to October 31 1939 in accordance with his profession as doctor, by my order.
Undertext was the interior secretary’s scrawl and the counterslash of Vice President Knox. Such a document recalled to my mind the old internal passports used between the martialized states in the years following the Ebb, but the notes inscribed here sang a different song. I returned it.
“Say you’re American,” said Doc, avoiding a milk truck double-parked on right; it looked to have been beaten out from tin. “You say you never seen or heard of these? You a missionary kid or something? Grew up somewhere else?”
“I’m irreligious,” I said, wondering when and if to tell. At that moment I could viz him pulling up to heave us pavementways, having done with us all, and cruising back into an uninterrupted life. Before I could run truth through unhearing ears, he voiced anew.
“One of the sons of darkness, huh?” he asked; I’d no idea what was meant. “Look, I can’t figure this out. I’m going to give you all the medical help I can. But a lot of this jive just doesn’t wash, friend. Once I get you fixed up we’re going to have to do some serious talking if you want anything else. And I want straight answers, get me?”
“None other,” I said.
“Americans, my ass.”
Tenth Avenue, unnoticed, became Amsterdam. As scenes unwound before me in unending loop my head’s throb redoubled, but each sight fascinated so that I could do no other than to try blinking away the pain as every vision passed. Long low blocks of tenement drabness, unshattered by highthrown stone and glass spears; taxi’s lemon exoskeletons amidst hundreds of gray scuttlers parked and mobile; fitfully illumined allnighters hawking crates of produce, restaurants IDed with neon curls, newsstands safe behind paper battlements; olive-hued mailboxes, enameled blue streetsigns, black iron lampposts and churches’ stained glass; deadhour strollers rambling under jacket, tie and hat, free of sweat’s gel, pacing night’s walks as if en route to office: all bespoke a different world’s thrall, newmade flesh from history’s dust. That we could spend many unguided minutes here seemed unimaginable; doubtless the late hour sent optimism into coma. Doc’s breath seemed to be coming easier to him now; perhaps he’d calmed enough to talk of other puzzlements.
“How’re you familiared with Russian tongue?” I asked. “You’ve been?”
“After the war,” he said.
“Drafted?”
“We all enlisted, man. Thought we could prove ourselves that way. Come out of it with some respect. Shit.” His smile showed nothing approximating happiness. “Kept the whole 369th over here doing KP and maintenance whole damn time. Least I was in the hospital unit even though half the time I didn’t do nothing but make sure the blood didn’t get mixed, once we was allowed to give blood. Even then I think they just used ours on the French.” He sighed; lit another cig. “Our commanders kept saying we’ll go soon, we’ll go soon. Theirs kept saying not yet, not yet. Once Armistice Day came, then we finally get shipped out.”
“After war’s end?”
He nodded. “Siberian Expeditionary Force,” he said. “After the Reds took over. Don’t know to this day if anyone shooting at us was a Bolshevik or not, one or two times anybody shot. We just camped out in the middle of nothing, drinking potato juice and wishing we was back home. Froze my goddamn ass off; they said what they gave us was winter gear but I don’t think so. Lost three toes. Didn’t even feel ’em go. One day they packed us up. Sent us back, same as before, except half of us died of exposure there and another third caught the bug and were dead before we reached home port. Swear to this day only reason we went was so they could get rid of as many of us as they could without anybody noticing.” His voice trailed away, as if fading from spectrum range. “You used to be in the service?”
“Retired,” I said; the way he’d described the campaign wasn’t as I’d read of it, but then his would have been a prejudiced view. “How’d it show?”
“Way you carry yourself,” he said, turning onto 110th, heading into Harlem. “Even the mud shines on your shoes. I can always spot a military man.”
“The uppers are glossed with Everglo—” I began, explaining my polish; caught myself.
“Where were you stationed?” he asked, not noticing, or choosing not to notice.
“All over.”
“Oh.” He smiled. “So you was in the service and you’re going to tell me that’s why you don’t know what flyers are? How long were you in?”
“Twenty-three,” I said. He didn’t eye me directly before we reached the next light. Something had faded the signals’ dye; they showed as blue and orange.
“In American service?” he asked; I shrugged. “How old are you?”
“Forty-seven.”
“I’m forty-nine,” he said; from his face’s line and sag I’d have added ten. We turned onto Eighth in silence which thereafter remained unbroken; perhaps fatigue outweighed suspicion. Within minutes our evident destination showed; Doc pulled up on the righthand side of the avenue, before a five-story brownstone older than most of those surrounding. “I can park here till morning. This is it.”
Through the carwindow came, from basement’s direction, manmade sound, blaring pure with percussion’s blast, with horn’s entwining notes. Opening the cardoor I heard the music swallowed by unexpected roar; as it crescendoed I touched foot to sidewalk. Black shutters curtained the sky; a slender metal tree burst through the pavement near. An elevated ran atop Eighth; a train screeched uptown.
“Let me unlock the front,” Doc said, walking round the car, opening the trunklid. “Follow me. Here’s your bags, Luther. Jake, let me give you a hand with Octoberana.” To the entrance stoop’s left, from basement to sidewalk, ran an awning’s long tunnel, aimed out of the club from which the music issued; the club’s name was Abyssinia.
“Oktobriana,” I corrected.
“Weighs more than she looks,” Doc grunted, with Jake bearing her upward. I lugged the bags. Beyond the entrance’s two-windowed wooden door I vizzed a broad tilefloored hall lined with plaster columns, rich with marble detail. A chandelier brightened the gloom. Unlocking his office’s door—his name thereupon was stenciled in gold—with a key of medieval look, he walked across the hall, unlocked the door facing and went inside.
“Wake up, Wanda,” he cried. “Going to need a hand with some patients I got here.”
“Turn off the damn light,” the other, louder voice replied.
“Put on your clothes and get out here.” He emerged, pulling the door nearly closed, approached us, entered his office. “Toss the bags in here for now,” he said, turning on two lamps. “Right down over there.” Oktobriana, conscious but groggy, leaned wallways, kept from tipping by Jake. “Let me look her over first. You two oughta be able to hold out awhile longer. Never seen anybody laugh off a dislocation like you act like you’re doing,” he said to Jake.
Doc’s office was observably split into two large rooms, one to receive, one to repair. Opening a window, he switched on a ceiling fan, whirling hot air into eddies and pools roomwide. Jake carried Oktobriana into the exam room and lay her on a padded table covered with Japanese paper.
“Who’s Wanda?” I asked.
“Me,” came the loud contralto heard moments before. Wanda, of medium height and solid girth, wore cola-colored skin. A mauve kerchief knotted round her head hid all but a few strands of straightened hair. She strode through the room as across a boxing ring, her pink robe sweeping the floor. “Who wants to know?”
“My wife and associate,” Doc said, introducing.
“Nurse,” she corrected. Her voice carried an unspecifiable accent. “Bringin’ in strays again, Norman?” she asked; her tone lowered, thickened with menace as she eyed Jake and Oktobriana. “We’re treating their kind now? Mighty big of you.”
