Читать книгу Tengu - John Donohue - Страница 11

4 FAMILIARS

I sold my car when they did away with my job at Dorian University. With a life-long and inadvertent genius, I had managed to alienate both upper administration and the faculty there. The two groups were usually at each other’s throat, engaged in an academic blood feud whose mythic origins were by now irrelevant. The struggle gave meaning and shape to their lives, however. They would fight about anything—or nothing, for that matter. It was a refreshing change of pace for them to share a common object of contempt. Or it would have been if I hadn’t been that object.

Academia is an odd place. Stately buildings and ivy, wrought iron fences, and libraries fragrant with the smell of old books. Young people scurry to and from class, fresh, energetic, and naive. But in the long halls and narrow offices, those who work there fester in the dark like overeducated viral agents. Wet-eyed professors with obscure, irrelevant specialties and inferiority complexes browbeat students. Administrators, buffeted by faculty contempt and general inefficiency, sink into venal scheming. Any college campus is a circus, complete with color, entertainment, and the occasional glimpse of something really amazing. At Dorian University, the circus had a large number of clowns and a truly impressive freak show.

I’m bitter, of course. I had worked there as an adjunct for years, the lone specialist in East Asia teaching for a History Department that uncovered the past while vigorously trying to hide its own inadequacies. The individual members of the department had not aged well. They were choleric, flushed with self-importance, and obsessed with the onset of hypertension and other scary hints of mortality. It was possible that the spring of intellectual inquiry had, at one time, flowed in the History Department. I had only known it as the academic equivalent of a salt pan.

A friend had managed to get me an administrative position with the new Asian Studies Institute at Dorian, but it hadn’t lasted long. The faculty weren’t crazy about me. I worked dutifully at my desk all day, Monday through Friday. But my years with Yamashita have changed me. I used to think of myself as an academic pursuing a research interest in the Asian martial arts. I have come to realize instead that I am a martial artist with an advanced degree. It provided me with a sense of distance from my colleagues at Dorian. I couldn’t share the university-wide fascination with minutia and self-importance. The dojo has taught me that there are more vital things in the world than convoluted social science fads or the latest campus vendetta. People there found me utterly incomprehensible. And, ultimately, the mad dictator who was Dorian’s president decided to sacrifice me in some administrative gambit I still wasn’t too clear about. Not that it mattered. I was back to part-time teaching, cobbling together a living in a way that was depressingly familiar.

All of which helped to explain why I was late for Micky’s party. Long Island, where we both grew up and he still lived, was the Land of the Car. Those condemned to the netherworld of mass transit did not fare well. On that fish-shaped island, three railroad spines stretch from New York City to points east, but they are designed like pistons to ram huge numbers of commuters into and out of Manhattan during the workweek, nothing more. It makes other complex forms of travel difficult.

But I persevered. I got off the train and stood for a moment on the raised platform, looking down on suburbia. The South Shore of Long Island is flat. You can look out into the hazy distance and see row after row of rooftops, their shingles glittering through the trees. Water towers pop up at intervals in the landscape, pale blue towers standing watch over strip malls and playgrounds. I walked down the concrete steps and into the streets of Micky’s neighborhood.

It was familiar territory. We had grown up in a place much like this one: ranches and cape cods and split level homes lined up like so many dominoes in the developments that scrolled out along the flat, swampy terrain. Belts of scrubby woods separated the neighborhoods. Occasional shallow reservoirs that caught the runoff from the blacktopped streets were set like muddy blue jewels along the railroad line that linked the towns to Manhattan. As you rode the train east out of the city, the flash of green and blue in the window—patches of trees and water—lasted longer and longer as you traveled east through Nassau County. It created the illusion that the area hadn’t been overdeveloped. But it was just that: an illusion.

You could flee Metropolis by train and pass town after town where the details varied, but not by much. The differences were so subtle that more than one commuter who fell asleep on the way home and woke with a start somewhere along the line couldn’t tell from looking out the window which community was which. It was why the seasoned commuters had the litany of towns memorized, so that the call of Rockville Centre, Baldwin, Freeport, Merrick, Bellmore, and so on was a hypnotist’s instruction, a subliminal cadence count that prodded you awake when it was time to get off at your stop.

My walk was a step back into the past. Aboveground pools hulked in yards, sealed up for the winter with chemically aromatic blue plastic covers. Piles of leaves humped along the roadside and kids threw themselves into them, oblivious to dire parental warnings about what lay, wet and slimy, below the surface. I passed the local school, and way out on the playing fields red-faced kids were playing touch football on tired looking grass: I saw someone hook the runner’s coat and swing him to the ground. The sky was clear, and high up you could see the jet contrails leading into Kennedy airport. Some days, I miss it all.

Cars were parked along all the available curb space near Micky’s house. There were three or four in the driveway, packed in tight, with the last one jutting out onto the sidewalk. I walked up the path to the front door. It was a cold day, and the glass in the storm door was fogged up from all the people inside. I could hear the kids screaming in the backyard, despite the stockade fence Micky employed in a vain attempt at kid control.

Inside, there were people all over the place. I have two brothers and three sisters and they all seem bent on providing the world with as many young Burkes as is possible. I kissed my sisters Irene, Mary, and Kate hello and gave my mom a hug. My dad’s been dead for a while now, but I never come to these things and don’t imagine that I catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes I watch my mother sitting at gatherings like this and, in her unguarded moments, I imagine I see the brief light in her eyes, and I know she is feeling the same. Then there is a subtle sagging in her form as the illusion fades. I held on to her then, for a minute, feeling the bird-like fragility of her form.

But her eyes were clear and sharp, when she asked, “How have you been?” She worries.

I grinned and shrugged. “Good, Mom. It’s working out.” My mother has concerns about my career prospects. She was elated when I got the job at the university and was more upset than I was when I got canned. I think she worries that my youngest brother Jimmy will never leave her house and is terrified at the thought that I might return there as well.

I made reassuring small talk with her, letting her know I was keeping busy. I used to assure her I was staying out of trouble, but she talks to Micky and there’s no sense in lying to her. She’d find out anyway.

Deirdre was in the kitchen. She’s got high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, and it makes her seem as if she looks at the world with a great deal of skepticism. She married my brother Micky, so the appearance probably has some basis in reality. Dee is a product of the same Irish-American stew as the rest of us. She was smart enough to know life doesn’t always live up to our expectations, but deep down she was good enough never to entirely surrender the hope.

“Hey, Dee,” I said, giving her a peck on the cheek and a bouquet of flowers.

“Aww,” she said, “you didn’t have to do that. . . . ” She was pleased, but I could also see her eyes working. Dee worries about me, too. She’s convinced I’m living on the edge of destitution. I had no doubt that she and my mother would force a shopping bag of leftovers on me when I went home. I could see myself staggering down a train platform in Brooklyn, loaded down with excess rolls, meats, and other surprises. It was somewhat embarrassing. Connor Burke: scholar, martial artist, bagman.

“Michael,” she called out the window into the backyard.

“Wha!” a voice demanded.

“Connor’s here,” Dee called with a heavy Long Island accent. When she said my name, it sounded like ‘Kahna.’ Her kids said it the same way. Dee jerked her head toward the backyard. “Go see him. I’m gonna get a vase for these.”

The backyard was where the men and children hid from women, the controlling elements in their lives. Even in the cold, Micky was out there, hovering over a barbecue. He wasn’t alone. Our brother Tommy was huffing across the yard, clutching a football while three small children clung, screaming, to his legs. They were having the time of their lives, but Tommy, never in the best of shape, looked like he was going to die. Off in the far corner of the yard, some older Burke kids were murmuring to each other and pressing the toes of their sneakers against the thin sheet of ice that had formed on a shallow puddle. They looked like prisoners planning the Big Break.

I came out the door and Micky glanced at me. “Finally,” he said. “Now we can eat.” Micky is whipcord thin with a patch of white in his dark reddish-brown hair. He has a military mustache that bristles with energy. As a homicide cop he’s seen lots of things, the kind most of us don’t want to know about. It tends to make him cranky. The two of us have always been different in many ways. But when you peel us down to the core, the surface differences fall away and are unimportant. We’d been together, smelling blood, and lived through it. So when we look at each other, the recognition of experiences shared is like a current arcing through space and making a connection.

But we don’t talk much about that. Micky squinted at me, then bent down, opened the lid on a big orange cooler, and handed me a bottle of beer. He picked up his own bottle and clicked the neck against mine. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said and took a sip.

“Why should we be alone?” I replied.

Micky’s partner Art came through the sliding glass door that led to the den. He smiled at me. Art is bigger than my brother and his hair is a lighter, sandy sort of red. But he has the same cop mustache. And the same cop eyes.

“Deirdre wants to know how much longer, Mick,” Art said.

Micky poked the meat with a finger. “Gimme five minutes and we’re set.”

Art nodded at that. He started to head back to the house, then turned. “You talk to Connor about that thing yet?”

My sister Irene’s husband Nick came into the yard just then. Micky jerked his head in Nick’s direction. “Not now,” he told Art.

“There’s a thing?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Art said. “Right up your alley.”

“Art . . . ” Micky warned him. Then he looked at me. “After dinner. We’ll talk about the thing.”

“And what a thing it is,” Art said over his shoulder as he headed back into the house.

“I love it when you guys get technical,” I said to my brother.

Nick rooted around in the cooler and pulled out a beer, too. He looked at us with bright, expectant eyes, waiting to be let in on things. We changed the subject.

We had eaten and the light outside was fading. I always feel a bit overstuffed and sluggish after a family feed like this. But the kids hadn’t slowed down at all. They had gobbled down their meals and bolted for the yard, leaving paper plates piled haphazardly in the trash and a trail of potato chip crumbs that stretched from one end of the house to another. Twilight deepened and in the strengthening invisibility of night, they hooted like animals from far off jungles.

The den is Micky’s lair. It’s littered with old furniture and bad decorations. My brother paneled it himself, and in spots the wooden sheets of fake walnut are coming away from the furring strips. There’s a neat little space with a desk and a small file cabinet in one corner. On the wall to one side of the desk, there’s a framed collection of family pictures: my folks on the day they were married; all of us kids at the beach, squinting into the sun shining from behind the photographer. My dad, cocky and smooth-faced, posing outside a tent in Korea. He’s wearing a sidearm and a set of faded fatigues. His billed cap is pushed way back on his head. He looks young and thin and his ears seem big. He wouldn’t be that thin again until just before the cancer finally got him.

I sighed to myself, and Micky came up behind me and heard.

He handed me a beer, and in a rare moment of vulnerability, put his arm around my shoulders. We stood there for a hair’s breadth, sharing Dad, before he used the motion to turn me around to lead me to a seat. Art was with him. I looked at them expectantly, but Micky seemed like he didn’t want to talk business. Whatever it was.

Micky gestured at the picture. “Remember what Dad used to say about the Marine Corps?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Two things. ‘Best thing I ever did other than marry your mother . . . ’”

“And?”

“And ‘Don’t ever join,’” I finished.

“Smart man,” Art concluded approvingly.

“The Service . . . ” Micky said with poignant reminiscence. “It’s a whole other world.”

Now I knew my brother had in fact served a tour with the Marines in his younger years. It was both a source of exasperation and pride to our dad. He hadn’t relaxed until Micky came home. And in short order Dad began to worry again: Micky was, after all, home.

“You gotta watch out,” Art said, keeping this odd little conversation rolling.

Who knew where we were heading? “Come on,” I said, “you were both in the military.”

“We were idiots,” Micky said.

“Speak for yourself,” Art said. “I knew just what I was doing . . . though I did come away with a strong desire to never go camping again.”

My brother snorted and drank some beer. Both men smirked in remembrance of things that I, a lifelong civilian, would never know.

I held up a hand. “Boys. Please. I can swear that I have no desire to enlist.”

“Enlist?” Art asked. “You’re too old.”

“Too weird,” Micky added.

“So what are we talking about?” I asked. I paused and added with emphasis, “Is it . . . the thing?” It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

Art got up and made sure the door was shut. It has a habit of popping open at odd moments. Micky’s carpentry is effective but rarely precise.

My brother eyed his partner. Art came back to his seat and sat forward, cradling his beer bottle in his hands. “Okay. Look. I got this call about you.”

“I didn’t do it,” I grinned. But neither man smiled back.

“Seems your fame is spreading, Connor,” Micky snickered. “Someone wants to know whether you’re the real deal.”

I sighed. I’ve been in the paper a few times over the last couple of years. I get some mail from martial artists who yearn to know “what it’s like to put your skills to the ultimate test.” That’s the way one guy put it. Some people confuse real life with a movie. I hate to break the news to them: being on the sharp end of events is scary and exhausting. There’s no sound track. No guarantee of a satisfying ending. When I think back, and I try not to, I’m left with a jumble of memories; my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow, the feel of another human being’s waning heat. There’s the smell of blood and the crackle of radios when the ambulances arrive, as well as the flush of guilt, relief, and surprise. Finally, I recall the desire to sleep forever.

I looked at my brother and his partner, then held my hand out. “Come on. What’s up?”

Art licked his lips. “I got a semi-official inquiry about you. Guy I knew years ago in the service named Baker.” He looked at Micky and said, “He re-upped and made a career out of it.”

Micky shrugged and made a face that said we all screw our lives up in unique ways.

“This Baker sounds like a real hard-charger,” Micky continued. “You know, Special Forces stuff: parachutes, scuba gear, sneaking around, cutting throats . . . ” He looked up at Art. “Like someone else I know.”

His partner shrugged. “Yeah, well, I was young and foolish once, too.”

I sat forward. Special Forces? This was a part of Art’s life that I knew nothing about. Micky saw the look on my face and laughed tightly.

Art shot him a dirty look, and continued. “Baker loved all that crap. After I mustered out, I lost touch. But you hear things . . . he’s been involved in all kinds of stuff.”

Micky looked at me. “Like the martial arts.”

“Aha,” I said, ever alert to a clue.

“Aha,” Art echoed.

“They did some sort of basic hand-to-hand training when I was in the Marines,” Micky said.

I nodded. “Basically judo and jujutsu, from what I’ve read.”

“Yeah,” Art added. “That and the more subtle techniques like jump on the enemy’s head once you knock him down.” He reminisced for a minute. “Simple, yet effective.”

“So what’s Baker want?” I asked, trying to get them back on track.

Art fished a note out of his pocket. “He’s involved with some new unarmed system fighting they’re teaching.” He looked at the small piece of scrap paper. “It’s based at Fort Bragg at something called CERG.”

“Let me guess, “I said, “the Center for Effective . . . ” I trailed off, at a loss for inspiration, but sure that I was on the right track. The military loves acronyms.

“Close, but no cigar. It’s the Combat Effectiveness Research Group.”

“Seems important, yet extremely vague,” Micky said. “Now I’m sure this is something related to our government.”

Art gave his partner a look, then faced me. “Anyway, Baker’s always on the prowl for new ideas and techniques . . . ”

“New blood,” I suggested.

“Fresh meat,” Micky corrected.

“ . . . and he had read a bit about you. He made the connection between you and Micky, then between Micky and me, and was making some inquiries about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

Art held up a finger, “Well, we both spoke with him. I said you were an academic, a writer of fine, yet obscure tomes . . . ”

“I said you had a knack for pissing people off and getting into trouble,” my brother continued.

Art nodded thoughtfully at the comment. “It’s true, you know, Connor.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “And I say that as a friend.”

I shrugged his hand off and smiled. “Will you cut that out?” I looked at Micky. “What else did you say?”

For once, my brother’s face lost its usual sarcastic look. We both had light blue eyes and the same smirky facial expressions that had outraged countless nuns in our bumpy progress through parochial school. But it was gone now and he was very quiet and very serious.

“I told him,” Micky said in a careful voice, “that I had seen you do some remarkable things in some tough situations.”

Art added, “I told Baker I thought that you were the real deal.”

“Hmm,” I said, momentarily surprised at them both.

Then Micky reverted to type. “We also told him you needed a job.”

“He said he’d contact you,” Art supplied. “He may have a proposition.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Art, however, did. He sat back and took a long sip of his beer. “Baker’s a wild man, Connor. Keep your eyes open. But look on the bright side.”

Micky and I looked at Art skeptically.

“Your mother will be so pleased,” he told the two of us, beaming.