Читать книгу Inhabited - Charlie Quimby - Страница 13

If you weren’t in a shelter, where did you sleep last night?

—Point-in-Time Homeless Survey

July third. Last day of America’s Big Blowout Birthday Sale! at Freedom City. Isaac had tried to get Barry to simplify the banner to Big 4th of July Sale! but Barry wasn’t interested in advice from a set-up man, not even one with a degree in Library Science. Isaac plugged in the blower and the Air Dancer shimmied upward, its green Elastic Man arms grasping for motorist attention, then he checked the anchors on the fat talons of a twelve-foot-tall, starred-and-striped Bald Eagle. Uncle Sam, straddling a rocket like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, took aim at the Endoscopy Center across the road. A squeeze of the Patriotic Elephant’s trunk (Barry didn’t stock a Patriotic Donkey) confirmed it had achieved full inflation. High above the parking lot tableau, the store’s signature, a quarter-acre Old Glory, idly curled and uncurled like a bullwhip about to slap some sense into a small country. Passersby might keep passing by, but none could escape noticing something big was going on at Freedom City.

After installing the patriotic figures, Isaac turned to the birthday cake. It was so out of sync conceptually and categorically. America celebrated with fireworks and corn on the cob, not cake and candles. Besides, the pastel yellow, pink and blue frosting clashed with the primary colors in the rest of the display. His opinion wasn’t welcome on that either.

Isaac unpacked the cake, shipped in a carton so flimsy the cardboard seemed not worth recycling. Its beaten fibers imparted a faint odor of the ocean and off-gassing PVC. He set aside the patch kit and rudimentary instructions smudged onto paper thin enough to roll cigarettes. So what if the cake leaked? You didn’t leave a birthday cake up for weeks like you did a Frosty the Snowman. As he pumped the cheap plastic foot bellows that completed the package, the cake stirred and swelled like a drunk trying to get up from the pavement. Isaac wondered what the makers in Guangdong thought about the country receiving these garish totems. Were they mystified that Americans expended their wealth this way? Did they even understand what a lawn was?

Isaac hurried through setting up the hot dog cooker and table so he could be gone before Mai appeared. She barked at him under normal circumstances and so far the big blowout had been a bust. Who was going to buy a flag or an Uncle Sam the day before the holiday? She was hard on Barry, too. Failure and disappointment confirmed her fatalism; today should give her great satisfaction.

“The cops came by last night. They said they’re canceling the fireworks,” Isaac said to Barry. Barry might know if the police had arrested his neighbors.

Barry didn’t look up from his computer where he constantly price-checked competitors he insisted were false fronts for the foreign manufacturers. “The sheriff has another drone—for wildfires or search and rescue, they say.”

On the screen, a deputy prepared to hurl into the air what looked like an oversized hobby aircraft. “National Geographic did that story a year ago,” Isaac said.

“We don’t get National Geographic.” Barry thought it was global warming propaganda from Washington.

Barry didn’t get the paper, either. He only read to confirm his fears. He acquired his news from prepper newsletters and websites that linked to patriot groups who were anti-everything, from immigrants, vaccines and solar power to Obama, taxes and the Federal Reserve. Isaac shared Barry’s distrust of the government but his unease had nothing to do with politics; it was rooted in everyday experience. Barry was convinced he was on a watch list; Isaac had actually been interviewed by Secret Service agents at the Reagan Library. Funny how flag-wavers were more afraid of their own government than Isaac was. He should write that down.

“Instead of a drone, they call it an unmanned aerial vehicle,” Isaac said. “They say they can search for the color of a lost hiker’s shirt or detect his heat signature through the brush.”

“Yeah, right,” said Barry. “Why did this county get cleared so early to fly them? They got that Bearcat armored vehicle, too. And then they flaunt it. It’s a warning shot!”

Barry thought everything was a warning shot. He obsessed about border-crossing terrorists and military troops on domestic maneuvers, the NSA listening to his conversations and the IRS taking his money. He had Mai’s undocumented relatives sewing the Made in USA custom products in the back room and he rented the farm to tweakers because they paid in cash and didn’t complain about conditions, so Barry had some legitimate worries, but when Freedom City was shut down, it would be by Google spies, FedEx planes and brown-shirted UPS drivers knocking at every door.

Isaac had spent his afternoon failing to locate Wesley Chambers. With Wesley’s bike trailer, he could move his camp in one trip. Now that he’d been discovered, Isaac was anxious to clear out, even if it meant going back to the turmoil along the river, something he could consider only because of Wesley’s company, and then only until he found something off by himself. Isaac didn’t mind living alone. Loneliness only sank in when he was around people.

He returned to camp and packed up with the idea he might talk Barry into hauling his gear to town after the shop closed. Of course Mai would object. She didn’t like Isaac and she figured their little under-the-table empire was better off including only family. It was too early to head for Freedom City so he sat and read for a while. Mike, the hero of the book, had made a dangerous plan to evade pursuing lawmen by jumping bareback and naked into a wild river cauldron that would suck them underground and maybe spit them out again. Either way, dead or alive, Mike would become free. Isaac knew something sad was about to happen to Potatoes the horse but he kept reading. The horse began to swim against the current until Mike turned his head downriver. The horse knew. Or maybe he didn’t, but he was faithful to Mike. The adventure had distracted Isaac but now sorrow overwhelmed him. He wanted the trackers on the ridge to see Mike and capture him before it was too late but they were only visible to each other for one second and what if the trackers looked away just then? Isaac could feel the pages thin in his right hand but he had to stop reading. Mike was selfish. He thought he and Potatoes were one, that the horse cared about his philosophy. The trackers only saw the river and the river didn’t care if they drowned or surfaced again. Isaac cried for the horse and wept for himself and how life was only one second on the river.

Car doors slammed. Isaac couldn’t see them but he knew from the scrabbling in the street the kids with the remote car were back. He couldn’t read now with his brain listening for the whine to start up.

He didn’t want trouble so he tried to wait them out before departing to work. As the shop’s closing time approached, he made his usual preparations to leave camp. A sliver of grass across his duffel’s zipper; a pebble on the cooler lid; the camp stove leaned against a tree at a forty-five-degree angle. Then he marked the relative positions of everything with twigs. At least he’d know if anything had been disturbed. Now it was getting late. He’d have to go. He dropped his bike into low gear and waited for a break in the noise. When it came, he burst out of the trees hunched over and pedaling hard. One boy fingered the controller while the other two crouched over a black car with batwing fenders. Just as Isaac hit the pavement, he heard that revving dentist drill sound as the car reared on two wheels.

“Watch out hobo!” one of them yelled.

“Did you say hobo or homo?” another laughed.

The thing screamed past Isaac’s tires and cut abruptly in front of him, but turning too fast, it rolled with a hard plastic clatter and flipped into the gravel at the road’s edge. Isaac cranked away without looking back. If the car was broken, it would be his fault.

Isaac raced the back way to Freedom City, jumping the curbs and landscape barriers that separated the parking lots. The inflatables stood like sentinels protecting the store against invasion. Barry had already taken in the hot dog stand. Mai must have melted in front of those windows reflecting heat like a solar cooker. Another grievance she could hold against Barry, who’d insisted the free food would be a big draw, as if people couldn’t wait to get a jump on eating their fill of Fourth of July hot dogs. The giant flag, which never came down because it required six to fold it, snapped overhead, the only sound in the empty parking lot. Inside, the display lights were off; only security lamps illuminated the shelves. Shit. He wasn’t that late. The door resisted his pull. They’d probably locked up against stragglers while they finished in back.

He cut the power to the bald eagle and the air dancer. The eagle began to sag and Elastic Man immediately collapsed. Isaac ripped loose the Velcro skirt attaching the nylon sleeve to the blower and removed Elastic Man’s telescoping support pole. By the time he’d finished breaking down the dancer, the eagle lay on its side. Isaac walked the air pockets flat so he could fold the bird. The dolly for moving the displays was still inside. He pounded the heavy glass with both fists. No response. He went around to the receiving door and tried the buzzer. Nothing. Barry’s red Silverado wasn’t in its usual parking place. The possibility of murder-suicide simmered in the store some days, the only question being which spouse would be which. But dead men didn’t drive and neither did Mai. More likely, they were unwilling to witness further the travesty of America’s Big Blowout Birthday Event. What did they expect him to do with the doors locked—abandon his responsibility? Where was the respect? People always looked through him, walked past him, talked over his head as if he were ignorant. They assumed the worst. Barry, at least, should know better. He depended on Isaac morning and night, took him along to customers’ houses. He trusted him on the farm property and put his approval in writing. Isaac had fulfilled their deal to the letter and the day! And now Barry had blown him off without even a note. No Sorry, Isaac. Had an emergency. Back soon. No Key’s under the sandbag—have a Happy Fourth! He heard Mai saying to Barry—Nobody going to buy. Just leave in parking lot. Melt. Kids take. Who care?

Nobody cares. They didn’t need him. His agreement with Barry would unravel the second he moved his camp. Mai wanted his job for one of her nephews. She would attack and Barry would fold. Like the innocent horse in the river, Isaac was about to be drowned by his master’s folly. The six-foot-tall birthday cake mocked him. Happy, the second layer said. Isaac was not happy but then it was not his birthday. He unsheathed Jake’s knife and tried to slash off the top of the candles. They simply flattened and bounced back up. He braced the cake with his foot and free hand and thrust into its Happy middle, releasing a fart of vulcanized air. He slit the elephant’s trunk. It slumped to its knees and blubbered until Isaac unplugged the blower. Stabbing Uncle Sam seemed semi-treasonous, so he attacked the rocket he rode. With a sigh, they expired as one.

Isaac awakened to the sit-sit-sit of lawn sprinklers. Probing for an uncompressed inch of cardboard between his elbow and the river cobble, he remembered where he was, near the entrance to an office park under a low umbrella of yews that provided its only park-like touch. He was totally fucked now. Barry had only gone for takeout and left Mai locked in the store so she wouldn’t have to deal with Isaac. From behind the dumpster, he’d heard them fight over the carnage outside. They started by blaming each other, but eventually they would figure out it was him. For the first time in months he could sleep in. Nobody in the office park was coming to work on Independence Day.

Isaac didn’t require Wesley’s bike trailer to move his camp after all. His Coleman stove and cooler were missing, along with the tarp; clothes from his duffel scattered in bushes and hung from branches; the slashed tent, crumpled on bent poles, was spray-painted NØHØBØZ; tent stakes were stabbed through the yoga mat. He found his sleeping bag sopping in the ditch. He apologized for dragging Wesley out here.

“Come back to the island with us,” Wesley said. “We don’t let this shit happen down there.”

What Wesley meant was that he didn’t let it happen. Wesley stood a shade above six feet, one-quarter of which seemed to be his close-cropped head, a skull as wide as a cinderblock with a jaw that seemed to predate civilization. His face had fleshed out and his arms lacked their old definition but his bulk still promised the capacity to do serious damage. It was well known on the river that in the military Wesley had acquired serious survival skills that went far beyond what berries to eat in the wilderness. Isaac regarded him as a peacekeeper, someone like the president who you’d trust to murder on your behalf.

But having Wesley on the island didn’t guarantee peace on the river. The banks curdled with defeated tribes declaring war on each other—hard partiers, domestic disturbers, raving anchorites, angst bearers, mental-case poets. Loud was how they fought, expressed ecstasy and pain, showed strength, attracted witnesses, alerted allies, cleared space. Volume was an unarmed man’s weapon, a lone woman’s bodyguard, a weakling’s last hope.

Isaac figured he might last there a week.

The group waiting for the Day Center to open looked the same to Isaac as every weekday. Men and women cupping cigarettes and clutching sacks of laundry. People locking their bikes and chaining their dogs. The bleary-eyed and red-faced ready for a breakfast of sugar and powdered creamer laced with weak coffee. Women seeking a safe place to sit out the morning. The jobless who needed a routine as badly as a paycheck.

Inside or out, waiting was the main activity at the Day Center. Waiting for a washing machine or a shower. Waiting for the phone or to sign in for a storage bin. Waiting for the mail to arrive or for somebody to finish with the newspaper. Waiting for the crapper—that was the worst. And when the Day Center closed at noon you went off to wait somewhere else—the soup kitchen, the park, the library or the bus stop. If you didn’t like waiting, you could walk—the two reasons Americans bought cars as soon as they could.

Isaac waited outside Sylvia’s office. Sylvia Tell was the Day Center director. Toward all her fallen guests she was skeptical and stern but ultimately forgiving, the way Isaac hoped God would turn out to be. When it was his turn, she gave him the look. Everybody knew it—one-third smile, one-third sour, one-third oh, come on now.

“I haven’t seen you here for a while,” she said. Her eyebrow stayed suspended and she folded her arms, turning the statement into a question. It was a trick of hers, like shining a bright light into your eyes. You were supposed to say something to make it go away.

“I lost my job and my camp over the Fourth,” he said.

“Check over at Outreach.”

“I’m looking for a place, not a case worker.”

“Well, forget anywhere on the river. It’s not like it was. The Point’s gone. Las Colonias is next and they’ll keep on going. You can’t drift along any more. You have to make a plan, and I don’t mean one of them Isaac Samson connect-the-dot-fate-of-the-universe plans. I mean for your own life. You’ve got to listen to others sometimes.”

“I hear others plenty.” That was a big part of the problem.

Sylvia did not care to hear from her guests about the system, bad chemistry, misfortune, poor upbringing or a lousy economy. She listened to a loving and all-knowing God. That made her world simple and the solution to other people’s problems plain. She didn’t have to deal with a flypaper brain, everything sticking where it landed. She heard a Bible verse and made it mean what she wanted. When Isaac walked down the street, he might hear a stop sign, Ronald Reagan and a stranger’s dog speaking at once. How was he supposed to make plans when he knew that radio station was still plugged into his head? The world already thought he was a loser. How many failed plans before he proved worthless to himself?

Sylvia was speaking to him about being grateful for each day he was given. He was grateful for a day he did not explode. “I’m stating the facts of my situation.”

“What you believe are the facts. Your belief in a fact does not make your belief factual.”

He could feel Sylvia about to Sylvia him, tie him in knots with his own rope. Sometimes he liked trying to escape but today he was not in the mood. Today he just wanted to find a safe place to sleep.

“So you still plan to go it alone?” she said. Sylvia had earned a doctorate in bullshit from years of bartending and she could read his mind about eighty percent of the time. “Then talk to Rudy Hefner. Him and his new girlfriend were in yesterday. They found a two-bedroom in Vegas, nine hundred square feet, only four hundred a month—and she’s paying half.”

Sylvia’s expression remained neutral, but it was not hard to imagine what she thought of that plan. Hefner was a big-bearded blowhard. His appearance at the Day Center meant his Gold’s Gym Groupon had expired and he needed a shower. He claimed to live off a trust account he’d set up with his earnings from an Alaskan fishing boat. It paid him enough never to work again, provided he found a woman with low self-esteem who would put him up when the weather turned cold. Spring through fall he retired to a box canyon hideout that everyone except Hefner called The Mansion. The Mansion was concealed amid rock fall on Park Service land and had somehow evaded detection by the rangers, which Hefner took as confirmation of his superiority and the general incompetence of the feds.

Isaac said he would think about it. He would rather find the place on his own.

He checked his mail on the way out. A Social Security form letter. A fundraising appeal from the hospital foundation. A cable company promotional mailing. A standard postcard stamped in red: Please Forward. If undeliverable or unclaimed after 60 days, return to sender. His mother had actually made a stamp so the forwarding looked official. Her handwritten message on the other side was invariably the same: Pray you are well. M

He signed for each piece and dropped them in the trash.