Big Machine E-Book

Victor LaValle

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 659

Beschreibung

Ricky Rice is a middle-aged hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. The sole survivor of a suicide cult, he spends his days scraping by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter arrives, reminding him of a vow he once made and summoning him to Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom to fulfill it. There, Ricky is inducted into a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom have at some point in their wasted lives heard the Voice: a murmur on the wind, a disembodied shout, a whisper in an empty room. All these may or may not have been messages from God. Their mission is to find the Voice - and figure out what it wants. Big Machine takes us from Ricky's childhood in a matrilineal cult housed in a New York City tenement to his near-death experience in the basement of an Iowa house owned by a man named Murder. And to his final confrontation with an army of true believers - and with his own past. Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle's fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us. Big Machine named: - American Book Award 2010 - Shirley Jackson Award 2009 - Winner - Best Novel - 10 Best Books of 2009 - Publisher's Weekly - Favorite Fiction of 2009 - Chicago Tribune - Best Science Fiction of 2009 - Los Angeles Times - Best Science Fiction & Fantasy - Washington Post - Most Valuable Fiction Book of 2009 - The Nation - Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence 2010 Winner

Leseprobe

Praise and Awards for Victor LaValle and

Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence

American Book Award

Shirley Jackson Award – Winner – Best Novel

10 Best Books — Publishers Weekly

Favorite Fiction — Chicago Tribune

Best Science Fiction — Los Angeles Times

Best Science Fiction & Fantasy— Washington Post

Most Valuable Fiction Book — The Nation

‘Beautiful.’

– Vanity Fair

‘Fractures all of our notions of how well-made fiction ought to behave … idea-hungry and haywire, too alive and abrasive to be missed. The multicultural novel has come of age — smashingly.’

– Kirkus

‘LaValle is as much wry fabulist as he is dogged allegorist, and his flights of grim fancy are tethered by acute observations. He can be awfully funny, too. [His]devilish fable renders the visible world–of science, social hierarchies, and New York Times headlines–a load of cultish hooey’

– Bookforum

‘If Hieronymus Bosch and Lenny Bruce got knocked up by a woman with a large and compassionate heart, they might have brought forth Big Machine. But it is Victor LaValle’s peculiar, poetic, rough and funny voice that brings it to us, alive and kicking and irresistible.’

– Amy Bloom, author of the New York Times bestseller Away

‘Big Machine is like nothing I’ve ever read, incredibly human and alien at the same time. LaValle writes like Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with Edgar Allan Poe, but this is even more than that. He’s written the first great book of the next America.’

– Mos Def

‘If the literary Gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison, and threw in several fistfuls of 21st century attitude, the result would be Victor LaValle. Big Machine is a wonderful, original, and crazy novel.’

– Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and About Grace

‘Victor LaValle is one of the finest writers around—puzzling but never abstruse, compassionate but never pitying. With The Ecstatic, he produced one of my favorite novels of the decade, and now, with Big Machine, he has produced another: a pristine window into a flawed human soul, but also a daring fantasy through which America and all its troubles come sliding gradually into focus.’

– Kevin Brockmeier, author ofA Brief History of the Dead

‘Sure to up his critical standing while furthering comparisons to Haruki Murakami, John Kennedy Toole and Edgar Allan Poe. Ricky’s intoxicating voice—robust, organic, wily—is perfect for narrating LaValle’s high-stakes mashup of thrilling paranormal and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, as the fateful porter—something of a modern Odysseus rallied by a team of ‘spiritual X-men’—wanders through America’s messianic hoo-hah’

– Publishers Weekly

‘unruly and entertaining…a monumental dream work’

– Los Angeles Times

‘a transcendent and provocative book that is wildly original and completely absorbing’

– California Literary Review

‘a Da Vinci Code for fans of Haruki Murakami’

– popmatters.com

‘Haunting and fresh … heroically strange … playful, entertaining and deadly serious … There’s a touch of Pynchon [but LaValle has] a style of his own.’

– Los Angeles Times

‘Spectacular … sprawling, fantastical … and beautifully drawn … ‘Doubt is the big machine [that] grinds up the delusions of men and women’. This novel ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with the sound of immense gears starting to turn.’

– The Washington Post

‘This tale is peculiar, magnificent and – as books about cults often are – quite funny.’

– Chicago Tribune

‘LaValle employs a sly wit and deadpan humor … Draw[s] comparisons to the work of Ralph Ellison and Thomas Pynchon.’

– The Wall Street Journal

‘Big Machine transcends the boundaries of standard literary fiction and defies readers’ expectations at every turn. Fantasy and reality constantly mingle, but the core issues – though messy and complicated – are undeniably human.’

– BookPage

‘Sweeping and swashbuckling … genius.’

– The San Francisco Bay Guardian

‘The tensions between sci-fi and noir material and the realist approach makes Big Machine crackle … [This] big novel grinds up our delusions about reality, spirituality and the principles of fiction.’

– The Dallas Morning News

‘Truly spellbinding.’

– Time Out New York

FOR OAKLAND, CITY FULL OF GOOD

Epigraph

“Nobody trusts anybody now, and we’re all very tired.”

—FROM JOHN CARPENTER’SThe Thing

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraph1: We Like Monsters123456789102: The Damned Unlikely Scholars11121314151617181920212223243: Into the Lungs of Hell252627282930313233343536374: Big Machine38394041424344454647484950515253545: The Resistance55565758: The Resistance6: Electricity5960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081Unanswered Questions with Victor LaValleAcknowledgmentsAlso by Victor LavalleCopyright

1

We Like Monsters

1

DON’T LOOK FOR DIGNITY in public bathrooms. The most you’ll find is privacy and sticky floors. But when my boss gave me the glossy envelope, the bathroom was the first place I ran. What can I say? Lurking in toilets was my job.

I was a janitor at Union Station in Utica, New York. Specifically contracted through Trailways to keep their little ticket booth and nearby bathroom clean. I’d done the same job in other upstate towns, places so small their whole bus stations could’ve fit inside Union Station’s marbled hall. A year in Kingston, six months in Elmira. Then Troy. Quit one and find the next. Sometimes I told them I was leaving, other times I just disappeared.

When I got the envelope, I went to the bathroom and shut the door. I couldn’t lock it from the inside so I did the next best thing and pulled my cleaning cart in front of the door to block the way. My boss was a woman, but if the floors in front of the Trailways booth weren’t shining she’d launch into the men’s room with a fury. She had hopes for a promotion.

But even with the cart in the way I felt exposed. I went into the third stall, the last stall, so I could have my peace. Soon as I opened the door, though, I shut it again. Good God. Me and my eyes agreed that the second stall would be better. I don’t know what to say about the hygiene of the male species. I can understand how a person misses the hole when he’s standing, but how does he miss the hole while sitting down? My goodness, my goodness. So, it was decided, I entered stall number two.

The front of the envelope had my name, written by hand, and nothing else. No return address in the corner or on the back, and no mailing address. My boss just said the creamy yellow envelope had been sitting on her desk when she came in that morning. Propped against the green clay pen holder her son made in art class.

I held the envelope up to the fluorescent ceiling lights and saw two different papers inside. One a long rectangle and the other a small square. I tapped the envelope against my palm, then tore the top half slowly. I blew into the open envelope, turned it upside down, and dropped both pieces of paper into my hand.

“Ricky Rice!”

I heard my name and a slap against the bathroom door. Hit hard enough that the push broom fell right off my cleaning cart and clacked against the tile floor. You would’ve thought a grenade had gone off from the way I jumped. The little sheets of paper slipped from my palm and floated to that sticky toilet floor.

“Aw, Cheryl!” I shouted.

“Don’t give me that,” she yelled back.

I walked out the stall to my cleaning cart. Lifted the broom and pulled the cart aside. Didn’t even have time to open the door for Cheryl, she just pushed at it any damn way. I flicked the ceiling lights off, like a kid who thinks the darkness will hide him.

I’m going to tell you something nice about my boss, Cheryl McGee. She could be sweet as baby’s feet as long as she didn’t think you were taking advantage. When I first moved to Utica, she and her son even took me out for Chicken Riggies. It was a date, but I pretended I didn’t know. The stink of failure had followed my relationships for years, and I preferred keeping this job to trying for love again.

Now she stood at the bathroom door, trying to peek around me. A slim little redhead who’d grown her hair down to her waist and wore open-toed sandals in all but the worst of winter.

“Someone’s in there?” she asked, looked up at the darkened lights.

“Me,” I said.

She pointed her chin down, but her eyes up at me. She thought she looked like a mastermind, dominating with her glare, but I’d been shot at before. Once, I was thrown down a flight of stairs.

“I mean, is there anyone in there that I can’t fire?”

Oop. I lifted the broom and shook it.

“I was just sweeping,” I said.

Cheryl nodded and stepped back two paces.

“I don’t mind breaks, Ricky, you know that.” She took out her cell phone and flipped it open, looked at the face. “But I need this station looking crisp first thing in the morning.”

“I’ll be done in a minute,” I said.

Cheryl nodded, reached back, and swept her hand through her waist-length hair. The gesture didn’t look like flirtation, just hard work.

“Hey! What did that letter say?”

I looked back into the bathroom. “Don’t know yet.”

She nodded and squeezed her lips together. “Well, I’d love to know,” she said, and smiled weakly.

“Me too,” I told her, not unkindly.

Then, of all things, she gave me a limp salute with her right hand. After that she turned in her puffy gray boots and walked toward the ticket booth.

THE BATHROOM’S WINDOWS were a row of small frosted glass rectangles right near the ceiling. They let in light, but turned it green and murky. Now, as I crept back to the second toilet stall, I imagined I was walking underwater, and felt queasy. I opened the door to find the first piece of paper right where I’d dropped it. And I recognized it immediately.

A bus ticket.

I bent at the knees and braced one hand against the stall wall for balance. My right leg ached something awful. I even let out an old man’s groan as I crouched, but that kind of ache was nothing new. I’d felt forty ever since I was fifteen.

I held the ticket at an angle so I could read it in the hazy light.

One way, from Union Station to Burlington, Vermont.

An eleven-or twelve-hour trip if you figured all the station stops between here and there. The date on the ticket read Thursday, the twenty-first of January, just three days off. The name of the company on the top was Greyhound. I worked for Trailways. It sounds silly, but the logo made the ticket feel like contraband. I leaned back, out of the stall, and peeked at the bathroom door to make sure I was still alone.

I checked the back of the ticket for something, a note, an explanation. Nothing. Then I remembered that I’d seen two silhouettes through the envelope.

I ducked my head to the left, looking to the floor of the sanitary first stall, but it hadn’t landed there. Then I looked to my right and saw that little cream-colored sheet, not much bigger than a Post-it, flat on the floor of filthy old stall number three.

Let me be more precise.

Flat on the floor, in a gray puddle, in filthy old stall number three.

Forget it.

Better to leave it behind than dip fingers in the muck on that floor. Even wearing gloves didn’t seem like enough protection. Maybe a hazmat suit.

Leave it there. Make peace with a little mystery.

I stood and rubbed my bad knee, even turned to leave, but you know that old saying about curiosity: curiosity is a bastard.

I opened the door of stall number three and tried not to look at the bowl itself, or at all that had smeared and splashed along the seat and the back wall. I opened my mouth to breathe, but the faint whiff of filth, like a corrupted soul, haunted me. It made my eyes tear up. Even my ears seemed to ring. I bet I looked like a nerve gas victim.

So I used the toe of my boot to tug the sheet of paper toward me, but it wouldn’t move. I had to use my hand.

I lurched my middle finger forward, even as I pulled my head back, and touched the corner of the soaked little sheet. I flicked at it and flicked at it, but the damned thing barely shifted. I had no choice.

I picked the paper up, right out of the muck. The gray liquid didn’t even run down my fingers, it just clung, like jelly, to the tips. It was cold and lumpy. My skin went numb. The wet paper lay flat in my palm; I peeled it off with my left hand, then held it to the greenish light of the windows.

“Ricky Rice!”

“Aw, Cheryl!” I shouted.

“Enough of that! You get out here!”

I would, but not yet. I stepped out of the stall and rose onto my toes, getting the soaked sheet as close to the windows as possible. I could see black ink on the paper. Make out the same handwriting that had scribbled my name on the outside of that envelope.

“I mean it, Ricky.”

Cheryl pushed and strained at the door, and the wheels of my cleaning cart squeaked as they rolled. I blew on the paper to dry it. The cursive was small, but neat, legible.

The wooden door swung open. I heard its steel handle clang against the stone wall.

I paid no more attention to Cheryl because now I could read the two lines of the note:

You made a promise in Cedar Rapids in 2002.

Time to honor it.

Without thinking, purely automatic, I walked back into that filthy toilet stall and flushed the note away.

But not the ticket.

2

THREE DAYS I thought about that note. Thought about it, repeated it in my mind, tried to forget it. But on the third day I showed up at my job with a packed duffel bag, which I stored in my locker, my mind not yet made up.

Cheryl kept to herself that morning, which was for the best. If she’d chatted with me like usual, I might’ve admitted what I was considering and she’d have convinced me to stay. It was stupid to do otherwise in 2005. Lots of people were already losing jobs down here in the lower sector. The rest of the country hadn’t been sucker punched yet. The bad news hadn’t trickled up, but it would. Cheryl would’ve pointed all this out, and I would’ve agreed, ripped up the ticket, and taken my duffel bag home at the end of the shift. But I wanted to make up my own mind about this, so my cleaning took on a meditative silence. The only sounds I heard as I wiped down her computer screen were the growling winds outside her office window.

The outdoor crew worked on the other side of the glass, shoveling in the storm. I knew the guys who were doing it, and I sympathized. The snow had been up to my shins when I came in at eight, and it hadn’t let up for an hour.

I washed windows, emptied trash, dust mopped and wet mopped the Trailways area, and all the while I wondered what to do when the clock struck noon. The bus wasn’t actually leaving until twelve twenty-five, but where’s the poetry in that?

By eleven I’d done as much in three hours as I would’ve stretched to eight on a normal day. If I did split on that bus, at least Cheryl couldn’t say I’d left her with a messy station.

But where was I going? Burlington, Vermont? What kind of black man accepts an unsigned invitation to the whitest state there is? There’d been that sting on television where police told deadbeat dads they’d won the lottery, and arrested the guys when they showed up to collect. Maybe that’s what this ticket was about. I wasn’t a father to anyone, but I’d sure made some bad plays in my life. I wondered if I had any open warrants floating around.

Or could something good be waiting for me there?

Before I could go into the bathroom and wipe down the counters for the tenth time, one of the guys from the grounds crew, a bald guy with a face like a turtle, asked me to go drop salt on the sidewalks. I might’ve argued with him if his skin hadn’t been blue.

I went out into the bright white cold with a ten-pound bag. I tossed the salt, and when that wasn’t enough, I grabbed another bag. I didn’t bother with my gloves, and pretty soon my hands dried out. Digging into the salt made my fingertips bleed.

It only took me about fifteen minutes to do one side of the station. Then I moved out to the parking spaces, but when I looked back at the building, it had disappeared. The snow came down like a shroud and I couldn’t see the cars behind me, and I stood alone in the storm.

You made a promise in Cedar Rapids in 2002.

Time to honor it.

How did they know?

Wind got into the hood of my parka and raked across my face, so I shut my eyes and moved with one hand out in front of me. I was so lost I might’ve been walking down the middle of the train tracks, wouldn’t have known until the locomotive stomped me.

And who were they?

Then my fingers felt a hard surface, and before I could slow down, I walked into it, face-first into the brick wall of Union Station. The doors I’d come through stood only five feet to my left. When I walked back into the station, I felt embarrassed, like everyone had seen me bash my face, and I went straight for the bathroom. I passed the grounds crew drinking coffee on the long benches, and their slurps sounded like snickering. The station seemed unfamiliar and slightly hostile now. For a moment I wondered if I was in the wrong place.

That damn bathroom snapped me back to reality. I’d just cleaned the place at ten forty-five, and an hour later it was vile. Someone had dumped handfuls of paper towels into one sink, then wet the mess until it turned to mush. Why? What the hell joy did it bring? There’s a specific kind of guy who does this gutless vandalism, either in sinks or toilet bowls. I always imagine he’s got a weak chin and a crooked spine.

The floors were murky with slush, so I mopped. I cleared the paper towel mush from the sink and checked the stalls. When I reached stall three, I opened the door slowly, afraid to find someone had snuck in through a window and vomited across the tiles. Thankfully, no.

But someone had added new graffiti. Two sentences, scratched into the paint with a blue pen.

“Suck a dickrub.”

“Buttsex happened here.”

As I got on that twelve twenty-five P.M. Greyhound bus, I felt absolutely no regrets.

3

NO REGRETS until about fifteen minutes into the ride. We left on time, which was a surprise in the middle of a snowstorm, but the driver didn’t seem like a time-waster. Not the friendliest dude you ever met, he snatched tickets from people’s hands as they boarded, but better that kind than the one who’d laze around the station chatting with the other drivers. Soon as he pulled out the station, the driver became our concentrated captain, his entire focus on the snowy terrain.

We weren’t a full busload, maybe three quarters. I had a small Hispanic woman next to me. Me the aisle, she the window. She’d fallen asleep before the driver started the engine, and I wondered what she might be escaping or what mystery she might be moving toward.

I became so curious I felt like shaking her awake and asking, because the insanity of my own choice became clearer with each block we left behind. I watched the streets I’d crossed every morning on my way to the station, Railroad Street, Broad Street, North Genesee, and felt as though I were saying good-bye to three of my coworkers. And that’s when I really understood: I quit my job.

I quit my job.

I was screaming inside my skull, I quit my job! I am forty years old and I just quit my job! What the hell was I thinking? I grabbed the arm rests and squeezed them so hard the plastic should’ve cracked.

I just felt so damn scared.

But it had only been a few minutes. We weren’t even on the highway yet, though I could see the on-ramp in the distance. Flurries of snow slapped against the windshield, and the driver turned the wipers on just as he approached a red light. The driver stopped at the crossroads, and I shook in my seat.

Just get out now and go back. Cheryl won’t even have noticed. Tell her you left for lunch.

But then the bus moved again. We reached the on-ramp. But, even now, there was still time! The bus skulked at the top of the ramp as the driver waited to merge. The snow came down so thick it could’ve hidden an eighteen-wheeler.

So I had one last chance to escape. I could holler to be let off and go back to the safety of a regular paycheck. I found myself on my feet before realizing I’d even moved. I grabbed the headrest of the empty seat in front of me, stepped one foot into the aisle, but then a voice shouted behind me.

“Negro, sit down!”

Who else could the voice be talking to? There were other Negroes on the bus (if you want to use that term), but none were on their feet. And do you know the craziest part? The most shameful part? I listened. I sat down.

As soon as I did, I became angry, at myself really, and turned around to snap at the speaker, but lost my voice when I saw the Negro who’d done the shouting. (I refuse to say African-American, it just takes too damn long.)

“Sit down and hear some truth,” the man said, squinting in my direction.

This guy. He was three-quarters bum and, unfortunately, one-quarter legal ticket holder. He stepped into the aisle, grabbing the headrests on either side of him for balance.

“We are at war, you people. America is in a fight!”

And with that, thirty-seven passengers groaned as one. Those of us who were awake looked toward the front of the bus, at the driver, for help.

But the driver had abandoned us. He leaned forward in his seat and held the steering wheel even tighter, as if to say, Can’t you see how hard I’m working?

“I’m not talking about Iraq. I’m talking about the battle here! On our soil. In our souls.”

We were on our own. Just us.

Once this became clear, the hobo paced the aisle. When he passed me, I got to see him better. He stooped when he walked, even though he was clearly younger than me. A slim body, but a puffy face, the blown-out nose of a lifetime drinker. I’ll bet you could get tipsy licking the sweat on his forehead. I’m sorry to say this, but the man looked like a goblin.

“What kind of fight am I talking about?” he continued. “I’m talking about faith, people. Faith and belief.”

Oh, no. One of those.

I would’ve liked it better if he’d just panhandled. Give him a few dollars and he’d be satisfied, but the religious types required a different reward.

Dealing with such folks goes in recognizable stages. First you appeal to authority, but the driver had refused us. So next you try and ignore. Most of the passengers slipped into an imitation of sleep. It was our best defense. Row after row, eyes closed and arms crossed. Some even faked loud snoring.

“Y’all think you can ignore me, but you’re proving my point! Our nation is at war, but we’re fighting in our sleep. How do you know whose side you’re on if your eyes is shut?”

“I wish my ears was shut!” a man shouted from the front.

The last stage, in such situations, is when folks just lose their patience.

“Who said it?” the bum asked, stamping forward.

“I’m at war with your big mouth!” another passenger, a boy, shouted from the back.

The bum stalked the aisle now, looking for one set of open eyes. I saw him through the cracks in mine. As he bopped down the aisle, he became more aggressive. He never hit anyone, but bumped every chair in the row, throwing his one hundred fifty pounds like a round of haymakers.

“To be an American is to be a believer!” he shouted. “But y’all don’t even understand what you believe in.”

Now the brakes on the bus huffed and groaned. We were on the highway, but hadn’t traveled too far. The driver brought us to a full stop on the shoulder, then got out of his seat.

That woke us up. Even the loudmouth got quiet. The Hispanic lady next to me craned her neck so she could see over the seat, then looked back at the bum with a smirk. She’d heard everything.

The driver pressed a button on the dashboard, which opened the bus door. Wind rushed in like water floods a sinking ship. People snatched their coats on. Snowflakes shot into the cabin, a blast of confetti that melted on the floor.

The driver clomped down the few steps and walked outside. Maybe he wasn’t responding to the bum at all. Did we have a flat? Next came the squawk of grinding metal. The driver had opened one of the luggage bays.

Now many of the passengers got out of their seats. Even one old woman whose snore had been louder than the bus engine. I’d thought for sure she was asleep, but she stopped in the middle of a snort and got up to take a peek.

Even the nut leaned over an empty seat to take a gander.

The old woman smiled at him. “I believe you’re getting kicked off.”

“It don’t matter,” he said. He sneered to seem defiant, but already his voice had weakened. It looked cold out there.

The bus driver disappeared inside the luggage bay. Only one foot stuck out, and it kicked around as he searched. As if the bus was devouring him. Then a brown suitcase flew out, onto the shoulder, like a bit of indigestible beef.

At that, the passengers applauded. Me too, I must admit. The bus driver shut the bay door, another grinding squawk, then made his way back inside.

The bum dragged himself toward the front right away. I thought he might protest the excommunication, but there was nowhere to appeal. On this bus the passengers were all archbishops and the bus driver was our pope.

The guy spoke as he moved. “Who gets God? That’s all I’m asking. Who gets welcomed to the table?”

“Just get off,” a raspy woman growled from the rear.

The driver climbed the three steps into the bus and stood there, saying nothing. The snowstorm outside was so white, so bright against the windshield, that it turned the driver into a dark blue silhouette. A silent shadow pointing toward the exit.

The bum stopped before he reached the driver. His knees dipped even though we weren’t moving, and he grabbed at the luggage racks for balance. He sighed deeply, a little theatrically, as he turned back to survey us. His eyes were as yellow as masking tape.

“Human beings are no damn good,” he said. “We even worse than animals. We like …”

He trailed off, cleared his throat, but his voice hardly reached a whisper.

“We like monsters,” he said.

Then he stepped off the bus.

Our driver pressed the button on his console, and the door shut with a low hiss. Outside, the guy lumbered over to his suitcase and righted it, then buttoned his coat.

“He don’t even have a hat,” the Hispanic woman next to me said.

The bus idled there, as if the machine were making up its mind too. The bum walked anyway, back in the direction of the on-ramp. On a clear day he’d have been in Utica in twenty minutes, but it might take an hour to get there in the snow.

That old woman, the one who’d faked a good snore, got up from her seat and walked down the aisle. She bent forward and spoke into the driver’s ear. The driver looked at her, then looked away, into his side mirror. Then he pressed the silver button and opened the door.

The old woman hopped down each step and went outside. The bum hadn’t even walked the length of the bus yet. She reached him and slapped at his arm. When he turned, she gave him her scarf, a purple puffy snake, and took the matching knit hat right off her head.

Then she returned to the bus.

But I guess the guy felt underwhelmed by the gesture. Maybe he thought she’d invite him back in. I thought she might have too. I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but I would’ve understood. Instead, all he got was some accessories. So the guy looked up at the bus, squeezed the knit hat and scarf into a ball, then threw both right over the side of the highway.

He looked at us and refused to move, even as the blizzard nearly tore the buttons off his coat. A showdown, a staring contest.

One we lost.

After the old woman got back to her seat, the bus driver hit his button and shut the door. He put the bus in gear and we moved. In all this drama I’d forgotten that this was my last chance to go back too, and returned to my seat. That shabby man remained, scowling from the shoulder. For all I know, he died right there.

4

YOU DON’T JUST BRUSH OFF an episode like that. In fact, you may feel pretty terrible about it for a good long while. When I went to use the bathroom on the bus, I walked with my eyes at the floorboards. Everyone moved through the bus that way. The only relief came when we reached a new station and some passengers disembarked. They ran off the bus so fast they nearly tripped one another. And those left behind changed seats a few times, as if our chairs caused the pain.

Albany, Worcester, Newton, Boston, Hanover, White River Junction, Montpelier, and finally Burlington. A twelve-hour trip that took sixteen with snow delays. I didn’t recognize anyone else by the end. Even the driver was different. I can’t say I felt less guilty, but there was no one left to remind me of my shame. This wasn’t a resolution, but it was a relief.

When we arrived at the Vermont Transit bus station in Burlington, I recognized the place. Not that I’d been there before, but places like it. This wasn’t Utica, with its marble columns and historic landmark status. More similar to the stations in Kingston, Elmira, and Troy. By which I mean sleazy, greasy, and small. Sleazy is a little harsh. The Burlington station was just a forest-green one-story not much bigger than the private homes across the street.

The bus pulled in, only a handful of us on board. I saw two cars parked in the lot, but the snow had piled so high there might’ve been more buried. I should’ve arrived at a little past midnight, instead it was four in the morning. When I stepped off the bus, it didn’t seem as if the sun would ever rise, the sky frozen in blackness. I wondered who, if anyone, would still be there to meet me.

On the last mile of my trip I envisioned my arrival. I imagined balloons and streamers. Or cops with guns. I only found a quiet station where a couple of white people waited to meet a couple of other white people. That’s it. And I was one black guy standing by the snack machines in a daze.

But I didn’t want candy. I wanted a hit.

A hit, a hit, a hit.

Can’t be scared when you’re sedated. I leaned against the snack machine, pressed the clear plastic buttons helplessly.

“Ricky Rice?”

I heard a man’s voice, but when I turned around, all I saw was his belt buckle. Had to lean back, really curl my spine, to see the eyes far above mine. Talk about a titan! Maybe my confusion added a few inches, but not many. This white man stood about seven feet tall. And just as wide. His mother must’ve been a polar bear.

“Are you Ricky Rice?” he asked again.

He was prepared for winter. Brown Carhartt jacket and matching snow pants. Logger boots and padded gloves. Even his face came covered with a graying beard that flowed down to his collarbone. I’ll bet you could sleep in a snowdrift when you’re outfitted like that. Me, I had on a peacoat and skullcap.

“I’m Ricky,” I admitted. I kept my back against the snack machine for balance.

Now he stooped so we could look at each other directly. I hadn’t felt this small since I was a child. Was he my escort, or was I his meal? I gripped my duffel bag tighter so I could use it as a weapon. Treat this like a shark attack and bop him in the nose if I had to.

He said, “My name’s Lake. I have orders to drive you north.”

5

WE CLIMBED INSIDE his enormous silver pickup. Warmth filled the cabin when Lake started the engine. Heat blew through the vents so hard it sounded like rushing water. Lake put both hands on the wheel. His Gore-Tex gloves swished against the cold plastic. We pulled out of the station. Lake puckered his lips and jutted his chin, and I watched him.

“We’re on Pine Street now,” he said. “And we’re headed to Williston Road. From there we take the interstate about an hour. In case you were wondering.”

I realized I was carrying my bag in my lap, like a child, a vision that made me feel vulnerable. I dropped the duffel between my knees.

Lake inhaled deeply. His chest was so thick that the brassy buttons of his jacket brushed the horn. He exhaled and yawned, licking his lips. From this angle, the hair surrounding his face looked like a mane.

I said, “How did you know about Cedar Rapids?”

“Iowa?” he asked.

“Come on, boss.”

Lake stared into his rearview mirror as another truck rolled up behind us. It practically chomped on our bumper, but Lake didn’t accelerate. He drove steady.

“Mr. Rice, how many bosses pick people up from bus stations at four A.M.?”

He had me there.

I jammed my foot into my duffel bag on the floor of the cab, digging into its side.

“So you don’t know anything about Cedar Rapids?” I asked.

Lake said, “I know they make a lot of cereal there.”

I leaned back, rested my face against the cool window. I’d slept on that bus, but not well. It had been like napping inside a steamer trunk. Lake’s truck felt more like a sleeper cabin, so I slipped into a quiet stupor. And in this way I watched us get on the highway.

Lake stayed as good as his word. One hour on the interstate. Then I figured we were there. But I was wrong. We had another half hour on Vermont’s back roads. They weren’t paved streets, just snow on top of ice and ice on top of mud, a three-layer cake.

Must’ve been five-thirty by the time we reached those roads, but the sun hadn’t crept up an inch. The sky remained blue-black, and in places the stars hid behind cloud cover. Snow stopped falling, but the wind continued, blowing so berserk that the top of every tree shuddered.

Despite my weariness I got scared again. Or maybe because of it. It’s one thing to get in the car with some burly mountain man when you’re still in a city. But when he gets you out into the country, well, there’s too many tales about this going badly for a guy like me, and I couldn’t help but ponder the possibilities. Dragged to my death, hung from a tree, kept prisoner in a shed for days. So the nervousness charged me up again, though Lake hardly seemed to notice. How could he? He was too busy driving.

His pickup was the kind you see in television commercials, where they hitch a blue whale to the back and the truck hauls that Magilla up a hill. But even this truck had trouble on these roads. The ruts were so deep that Lake weaved from one side of the road to the other. We weren’t driving at this point, just surfing. I bet we would’ve flipped over if it wasn’t for the surrounding forest, which stopped the wind from smacking us directly.

Then my anxieties spilled over. I pulled at the handle of my door instinctively. Lucky for me the damn thing stayed locked.

“What are you doing?” Lake said, though he didn’t look away from the road.

“I don’t know who you are!” I shouted. “You’re taking me out here for some wild shit, admit it!”

“Calm down, Mr. Rice.”

“Cut all this ‘Mr.’ business. I’m from New York. You don’t want to mess with me.”

Lake tapped the gas with his foot, and the truck bucked forward, moving with all the grace of a horny bull. Outside, the trees sobbed and groaned. Some bent so far I thought they would snap, and in fact some had. I could see them deeper in the forest wherever the moonlight grasped through the cover. Trees that had crashed, from the wind or the weight of the snow, and landed at painful angles.

“I’m a black man, you hear me? We don’t play! I will knock your ass out! Pull over, motherfucker. Pull over!”

Lake ignored me. I wondered if I sounded tough or terrified. I felt both. I worked at my door handle again. Reached down for my duffel bag so I could break the window open. I’m not saying that was a good idea, just my only one.

Before I could get the bag into my hands, there was an astounding scream, wailing carried on the wind, as a thirty-foot tree snapped and fell across the road.

It landed just ahead of us. So close that its limbs raked the hood. Bark sprayed the windshield hard enough to cause a crack. The front of the truck bucked, the wheels lifting from the road. That tree probably weighed more than Lake’s pickup.

We could only gasp and stare.

As we idled, the strong lamps of the truck illuminated the midsection of the tree, and from this close it looked unrecognizable, monstrous. The needles on its limbs became poisoned quills, and its bark an invulnerable hide. What lived out there, hidden in the dark?

I recovered and looked at Lake triumphantly, as if I had orchestrated this.

“I told you not to fuck with me. It’s bad luck.”

Lake looked across the seat. His eyes were so red! It was the first moment I considered he must’ve sat in this truck for hours because of all my snow delays. But I didn’t sympathize, not just then. I scrunched my mouth into a satisfied smile and said, “What you gonna do?”

Step outside, apparently. Lake left the truck, slammed his door, then went to the back. Heard him fussing around, but I didn’t pay too much attention because the man had left the keys in the ignition like a fool.

I slid toward the driver’s side slowly.

Then this big bastard stalked right past the window, didn’t even look in at me. I was halfway across the bench when he did this, but stopped moving. He carried a hatchet, two wood blocks, and had a length of heavy chain wrapped around his right shoulder.

He walked to the tree. It was the first thing that made him look small. Nature asserting its own scale. And this wasn’t even that big a tree. Not a redwood, just a black spruce.

Lake slapped the bark the way you affectionately slap a dog on its side. Then he got down on a knee and placed one wood block against the tree. Got up, lifted the hatchet, and used the blunt end to knock the wood block under the tree like a shim. He did this again, about a yard lower. Then he slid the length of chain under the tree and ran it all the way round.

This was my last chance. He’d attach the chain to the truck, then reverse until he’d nudged it far enough for the truck to get past. Then we’d be back on our journey to my demise.

So I slid the rest of the way, until I sat behind the steering wheel. All set to put the truck in reverse, but my feet couldn’t touch the pedals. This guy had his seat back far. So I was looking for the button or the bar, whatever that damn truck used, when I saw Lake climb over the tree and drop down onto the far side.

Now I could only see the upper third of him. You could’ve mistaken the man for bigfoot at this angle. A beast of the wild. He didn’t attach the chain to the truck. He wrapped it around himself. Then he stepped back a few feet. From the motion I could tell he was kicking at the ground, digging in.

Then he pulled.

This white man is insane. That’s what I thought.

Boy was he straining. Enough to make my shoulders hurt. Lake’s mouth snapped open, and he made this sound, like a long, low rumble. If I hadn’t been looking at him, I would’ve checked for storm clouds.

He kept pulling. Leaning backward. Screaming with effort.

Until, yes, that tree shook.

Just slightly. Hardly anything. A quiver. It resisted, but Lake would not relent.

The spruce scraped toward Lake now, an inch or two this time. The tree limbs on his side snapped in sharp protest. The big man kept shouting, and, rather than drive off, I rolled the window down, I stuck my head out. I kept blinking, wiping the snow off my eyelids. In the heat of astonishment, I didn’t even feel the cold.

That’s some old mountain man trick, I thought. Maybe the road was at more of a slant than I knew. Plus, he’d used those wood blocks. I tried to come up with an explanation, anything to feel less awestruck. But I was really only thinking one thing: this bastard moved a tree.

Lake stepped farther back and finished.

When the tree had been moved enough, just enough, for us to get by, Lake stopped pulling and leaned against it, severely winded. He heaved so hard his face touched the bark. He looked like he was mourning.

After gathering his things and dropping them in the truck bed, he got back inside the cabin. I’d pushed his seat all the way back again and taken my place by the passenger window. I didn’t look at him, only at the body by the side of the road. But Lake didn’t start driving, so I finally turned.

To find him staring at me. A challenge in the tight set of his lips.

I said, “Well, if we’re going to get there, let’s just get there.”

Lake nodded and drove deeper into the hushed woods.

6

“WAKE UP, Mr. Rice.”

What had I been dreaming of? I had a picture of my older sister, Daphne, in my mind. From when we were children. She protected me when I was still too young to handle myself. I suppose that’s why I’d been dreaming of her. Because I wasn’t so sure I could handle myself now. Would’ve been nice to ring her up, but she stayed all the way out in Long Island, and I doubted my prepaid TracFone could reach that far.

“We’re here, Ricky.”

Lake had already parked. He stepped out of the truck, came around to my side, and grabbed the handle, but it was locked. He fussed with the handle for another moment before he realized, and I just watched him in a kind of daze. Then he leaned close to the glass, his enormous face filling the window, the hair of his beard flattened like a sample on a slide.

“Please open up,” he said quietly. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

He let go of the door and waited for me to do it myself. I opened the door and got out.

We were in front of a small wooden cabin, as dark inside as the sky above. I couldn’t even make out the full dimensions, only the outline against the snow behind it.

Lake pointed at it. “This is yours, Ricky.”

“I own it?”

“Sure,” he said. “And why don’t we give you a jet plane too?”

Wind blew over the pickup truck, over the cabin, over Lake and me.

Lake rubbed his face with one gloved hand. “This is yours as long as you decide to stay.”

“What if I want to leave tomorrow?”

“Then we won’t monogram your doormat.”

“There’s a doormat?”

“It’s a house, isn’t it?”

And not the only one either. There were a few more lined up near mine. Six cabins, maybe more, in a cul-de-sac. A half circle of homes. Most were dark, but one had lights on.

“Most of the others are sleeping,” Lake said.

The idea that there were other people filled me with both relief and sorrow. Nice to know I wasn’t being thrown into an isolation tank, but maybe they’d been invited here just like me. Mysterious note, one-way ticket. Maybe I wasn’t being singled out. This is the part that brought a little sorrow. How embarrassing. To be a grown man who still wishes the world would tell him he’s special.

“What is this place, Lake?”

“We’re in a part of Vermont called the Northeast Kingdom.”

I waved at the cabins. “I mean all this. Who invited me here? Who do you work for?”

Lake turned to the pickup while I took a step toward my cabin. Mine. Imagine that. I still couldn’t. I’d been living in this one-room efficiency, sharing a bathroom with four sour men. I expected the cabin to disappear as soon as I touched the door handle. An illusion. A trick. A game. Can you guess that I’m a bit of a skeptic? Doubt has a long history with me.

Lake returned with my duffel bag. Hanging from his index finger, it looked as small as a fanny pack. “This is the Washburn Library.”

I reached the steps that led up to my cabin, just a few. I touched the wooden door. A brass number hung on the front: 9.

“This is a library?”

Lake set the bag down by my feet, went into his coat pocket, and gave me a set of keys. He got into the truck, started it, rolled down his window. All this while I looked at the keys in my cold hand. Lake shouted over the wind.

“Turn around!”

He drove away. Clearing my view.

There was the Washburn Library.

An enormous building. One long flat slab of sandstone set down in some of the most inhospitable sod America has to offer. It looked as long as a football field, but because of the snow, the low building was nearly buried. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t seen it right away. Maybe I hadn’t been prepared. Or willing. Now I saw it. The interior lights smoldered, and the Library glowed bleakly in the great woods. It looked like God’s gravestone.

7

YOU’D THINK I’D SLEEP for twenty-four hours after that long trip, but I only passed out for five. Awake by eleven, I strolled around my cabin as if its four rooms made it a manor. Bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen. I felt pretty giddy about each one. Nothing too fancy. There weren’t mink blankets or platinum faucets or whatever the wealthy buy with their loot. Instead, the cabin felt like a cozy place you rent for a romantic weekend. Since I was alone, that meant lavishing my affections on me. I began by making brunch. The fridge had been stocked.

I stood in the kitchen beating eggs in a bowl while the bread browned in the toaster. I turned on a small radio in the living room. Found a station that played classical music. Now, I have to admit, the only thing I know about classical music is that it doesn’t have a beat, but strings and horns seemed like the proper accompaniment for my first morning. They helped to calm me down. My first instinct was to run outside screaming my questions to the wind, but I didn’t want to make an ass of myself. No one respects a panicked man. So instead I made brunch to the sounds of calming music. Like I’d become cool simply by acting that way.

I dropped the eggs into the frying pan, and they sizzled in concert with the piccolo playing in the living room. Then, as I went to get some orange juice from the fridge, I saw this brother breaking into my house.

How should I describe him? I’ll be nice. He was portly. A portly black dude, going bald at the top, lifted my living room window and climbed inside, headfirst. The kitchen was adjacent to the living room, so I could watch him even though he hadn’t yet seen me. The classical music almost made his movements seem graceful.

As he pulled himself through the frame, I opened a drawer by the sink and found a carving knife. Then I waited for him to get all the way through.

The guy wheezed and huffed as the thickest part of him met with the unyielding frame. He tugged and strained. I turned off the flame under the frying pan as the eggs hardened into an omelet. His legs came through, and he crashed to the floor, then turned toward my closed bedroom door cautiously.

“I think he heard you,” I said.

He looked at me, and his eyes fluttered nervously.

“Well, shit,” he said. “How come you didn’t answer the door?”

“You never knocked.”

He nodded. “I guess I didn’t.”

He wore a blue sweat suit, top and bottom. The fabric snug around his thick legs and pudgy belly. Maybe this was his cat burglar’s outfit. He wore heavy hiking boots on his feet, but no coat, no hat, no gloves. He couldn’t have come from very far.

“I live next door,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Call me Peach Tree.”

“I mean your real name.”

“Why? You going to file a police report?” He sneered.

I held the knife by the handle, loosely, and wiggled it. “Man, get up off my floor.”

He leaned back, on his hands, and looked at my kitchen counter, the things on it.

“Can I have some orange juice?” he asked.

“Pour it yourself.”

As he lumbered to his feet, I closed the window. Then I went back to the kitchen, dropped my omelet onto a plate, and took the bread out of the toaster. The pieces were hardly warm now, but I didn’t really mind. I’d found a jar of raspberry jam in the fridge too, so I spread some on the toast. I kept the carving knife with me and took my food to the living room. Meanwhile, Peach Tree poured himself a drink. He filled the tallest glass he could find in the cupboard.

The small living room had a love seat and a rocking chair. Just to be sure Peach Tree didn’t try to stuff himself next to me, I sat in the middle of the love seat, plate balanced on my knees. A small wooden desk sat in the corner, but it had no matching chair. In the opposite corner was an empty bookshelf. It was as if the room had been decorated with donated furniture.

“You’re the one who came in last night, that right?” Peach Tree asked as he settled onto the rocking chair. Before I could answer, he drank his entire glass of orange juice in a prolonged gulp, like a child, blowing air through his nose so he wouldn’t have to pause. Once finished, he slammed the glass down on the floor with a thud.

“Had a real long trip because of the snowstorm,” I said. I sighed dramatically.

Peach Tree shrugged his beefy shoulders. “We all got troubles.”

I gestured to the window with my fork. “You had enough troubles getting through my window.”

Peach Tree’s face shined with either sweat or oil. He was clearly a few years older than me, despite how he acted. He had a round face that might have looked distinguished if he’d shaved off the last of his hair. Instead the top of his head looked like a bird’s nest, the brown egg of his scalp poking through in the middle. He looked at my plate, the meal still mostly uneaten.

“It’s skinny bastards like you that’s always making fun.”

I couldn’t tell, at this moment, which way he and I were going to go. I had an inclination to be friends, but these early steps can be delicate, especially with black men. None of us wants to be disrespected. We can be pathological about this. Our skin’s so thin it’s a wonder the blood doesn’t leak out our pores.

“I shouldn’t have snuck in here,” Peach Tree admitted, something like an apology.

“Well, why’d you do it?”

“I figured you’d still be asleep!” He leaned forward, laughing at his criminal logic.

Now I looked at him closely. “Damn,” I said. “What kind of drugs you on?”

Peach Tree sat back and clutched his belly. “Nothing, man. None.”

Then he looked over his shoulder, into my bedroom. “You holding?”

And that’s how me and Peach Tree became friends.

8

IT TOOK ME THREE HOURS to get Peach Tree out of my place. During that time we traded rehab stories, criminal records, and the names of our hometowns (Queens, New York, and Kansas City, Kansas). We even came up with a plan to take Lake down if he turned out to be dangerous. It had two steps: (1) steal Lake’s truck, and (2) run him over with it.

But Peach Tree kept coming back to drugs. He didn’t believe I hadn’t brought a little something with me. Even just a taste. I swore I’d been off for three years, ever since 2002, but he rightly pointed out that three years is a finger snap in the life of an addict. I even let him go through my coat pockets to be sure.

When I showed him out, I heard signs of life coming from the other cabins farther down. Music here, or some loud conversation from another, even the scuff of someone shoveling snow. But I wanted to get used to my cabin before I made more friends. Peach Tree told me there would be a banquet that night at seven, right inside the Washburn Library, to welcome us all officially. Who’d told him? One of the other newcomers who’d arrived before him. It was like a game of telephone.

I watched Peach Tree until he went into his cabin, then put the chain on my door. Locked all the windows and drew their blinds. Then I went into the bottom of my duffel bag and found the needle and six baggies of heroin that I’d brought.

In the bathroom I shut the door and sat with the kit in my lap. Almost three years without a kiss. That’s a lot of love to lose. I felt a little heart-sick looking at the stuff. But if I did it now I’d be no use at the banquet. Probably miss the whole thing. So I put the needle and baggies back into their Ziploc bag and hid them in the kitchen, under the sink, behind a stack of pans. To forget the temptation I cleaned my whole house, but I still felt the urge, so I went back to bed.

WHEN I WOKE UP AGAIN, it was night. I found my clock radio and checked the time. Six eleven.

The hot shower felt good. So did the shave. They even had cocoa butter in the medicine cabinet, and I slathered it all over, legs especially. My mother, my father, my sister, and me—put us all together and I doubt we would have weighed four hundred pounds. One of my old friends, Wilfred, used to call our family the Boney Bunch. He’d sing our theme song to me. “The Boney Bunch, the Boney Bunch, that’s the wayyyy they became the Boney Bunch, dah-dah, dah-dah, dah!”

But what do you wear to a banquet at the Washburn Library? I sure hadn’t packed a suit. Had I ever owned one? Sure, as a boy, but not since. So I did the best I could, found the outfit I wore when applying for jobs. A pair of khaki slacks and a royal blue shirt. I found an iron and ironing board in the bedroom closet.

I must have pressed those clothes three times each. I hadn’t brought dress shoes with me, so I had to wear my brown work boots, but I cleaned them off with a hand towel. Even brushed the dirt out of the soles. I could have used a touch-up, but I doubted there were any barbershops on the grounds, so I just patted my hair and hoped it looked even.

Last, I put on my tie. I remember I bought the tie and shirt together. Both royal blue. At the time, I thought this was a smooth look, but I couldn’t remember why anymore. Maybe I’d hoped they made me look like a gangster, but really I looked like the manager of a copy shop.