The Wanderer became the Count of Monte Cristo. He had been wronged. He had been exiled. Now he would take justice into his own hands, for God had failed to dispense it.
He didn’t go to work on the last day of November in 1949. He would need money for the business he had in mind, so he went to the bank instead. He closed out his account and put the cash in an unmarked envelope in his pocket. Just after sunrise on December 1, he was at the bus station in Detroit.
He could tell the ticket seller was nervous. The Wanderer’s corrupted face did that to people.
“Where to, fella?” the ticket man said.
“Cahgo,” The Wanderer answered.
“Did you say Chicago?”
The Wanderer gave him a nod and a grunt and paid the man his due. There was time before departure, so The Wanderer bought a cup of coffee and sat in a back booth to drink it in his crippled-face way. He left a twenty-cent tip on the table when he got up to go. Dimes were his favorite coins. The one that had come out just after the war had Franklin Roosevelt on one side and showed only half his face. The Wanderer liked that about the dime.
He was restless on the trip, spinning within his own head. His guts churned inside him and he breathed like a jacked-up soldier relishing the thought of carnage. The Wanderer closed his eyes as he listened to the tires pass over the road, and he prayed just like a sniper.
He left the bus depot in Chicago and walked to Union Station, his collar pulled up against the wind. He consulted a schedule and approached the window. The ticket master stared, but not for long. The Wanderer supposed he’d sold a lot of tickets to mutilated men who were headed for home and a town full of sympathy.
“Where to?” the man said.
“Na Orrrn,” The Wanderer managed.
“New Orleans, is it?”
Nod. Grunt.
“That’ll be the Panama Limited,” the ticket man said, “Southbound number five. You’re just in time; train leaves at five o’clock. You’ll be in New Orleans by nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”
The Wanderer paid for his ticket, bought himself a
Tribune
newspaper, and waited.
The train stopped in Carbondale and then went on to Memphis, where The Wanderer got off to stretch his legs and buy himself a sweet roll at an all-night diner in the depot. He decided to keep the paper napkin because of the slogan printed on it:
Memphis—Home of the Blues
.
Fields and forests were punctuated by small towns. The Wanderer didn’t even try to get comfortable on the Pullman sleeper; he just stared out the window into darkness. He refused the on-train breakfast; he was much too wound up to eat. By the time the train rolled into Jackson, Mississippi, The Wanderer could smell the past and feel it crawl over his skin. When he arrived in New Orleans, he’d been staring for 939 miles and listening to the voices all the while.
He felt in his pocket for the button he’d taken off his army uniform; it was the closest thing he had to a good luck charm. There was a book of matches in his pocket too, from his favorite tavern in Melvindale. The Wanderer liked to think he could burn something down if he wanted to.
He ended up in a hotel in the seediest part of New Orleans, where he registered under the name Edmond Dantès. Coming through the thin walls of The Wanderer’s psyche, the voices were very encouraging.
He was afraid to sleep.
He got hold of some Benzedrine and washed the pills down with liquor.
He couldn’t eat.
The headaches got worse.
He went on like this for days.
He bought a gun from a fidgety junkie, the one who’d sold him the uppers.
The Wanderer spent hours in the public library; he knew the librarians felt sorry for him. One in particular, plain looking and awkward, was all too happy to help. Her name was Eugenia Babbitt and she let him into storage vaults that contained back stacks of local newspapers. She let him into the closed stacks too, even though she wasn’t supposed to do that.
Eugenia Babbitt had never married. She spent most of her time lost in fiction, favoring it over reality. Eugenia wanted to find the tragic and mend the flawed. The day The Wanderer walked into the library, she could see how lost and lonely he was, and Eugenia fell in love. One night at closing time, she reached for his hand and took him home with her. He only agreed to go because she wore a pearl necklace.
The Wanderer never returned to the library. He didn’t want her kindness and he didn’t need her anymore.
W
ILLIAM
tapped on Dancy’s stomach and said, “Rise and shine, little man, Daddy has to go to work; we need money for a Christmas tree.” When Bonaventure tapped back, William grinned at Dancy and said, “My son just told me to have a good day.”
“We could be wrong, you know. We might have a girl.”
“Nah,” was William’s reply. “It’s my birthday, and today I’m right about everything.”
“Is that a fact?” Dancy said. “I’ll have to remember that on mine.” She was seven months pregnant and getting fairly round. She rose up on her tiptoes to kiss William goodbye. “Don’t be late,” she said, as she tucked a note in his pocket and told him he could read it later.
William had taken to leaving the car for Dancy, just in case she might need it. He ignored his wife’s instructions and read her note as he walked the two blocks to the St. Charles streetcar, and he couldn’t help but smile. He was still smiling when he got off at Gravier and walked to his office on Magazine Street.
At five, the receptionist ducked her head in his door and said, “Good night, Mr. Arrow. Doing anything special for your birthday?”
“Something tells me Dancy has a surprise planned; it would be just like her,” William answered.
“Well, y’all have fun, now.”
“Thanks, Beverly Ann. Have a good weekend,” William said. Ten minutes later, he turned off the lights and set off on his journey home.
Christmas decorations hung from lampposts, filled store windows, and decorated doorways. The lights brought The Wanderer clusters of headaches. He knew every inch of these certain few blocks. He’d been pacing them for nearly two weeks because he was following a certain person, waiting for a chance to return the hurt. Today was to be the day.
He walked toward William, admiring the cut of his suit and the shine on his shoes. The Wanderer thought he detected a lightness in the young man’s step; probably an excess of Christmas cheer. No, it was because it was his birthday! Of course! The Wanderer had read it in the Social Register, hadn’t he? People would marvel at the coincidence.
Left, right. Closer, closer.
A headache pounded spikes into The Wanderer’s skull. He could hear William whistling a Christmas song. On impulse, The Wanderer moved slightly left, enough to bump William’s arm with his own as they passed each other near the corner of Magazine and Gravier.
“Sorr,” he apologized in his manner of speech.
“That’s okay,” William said. And then added, “Merry Christmas!”
What passed for a grin crossed The Wanderer’s face. He wasn’t really sorry.
He took six more steps before turning around so that he was behind William. It surprised The Wanderer when William turned right on Gravier instead of left toward the streetcar; it wasn’t the usual pattern. But he liked the unexpected suspense and followed without missing a beat. William went into the A&P at the corner of Gravier and Tchoupitoulas. The Wanderer went in after and moved up and down the aisles, past the soup and cornstarch, the olive oil and Crisco. The shelves were low; he could keep William in sight. Eventually, The Wanderer made his way to the produce section and hovered there like a heat mirage, close enough to William to see where the younger man had nicked himself shaving.
The Wanderer felt sick from the headache.
As William stood at the checkout, The Wanderer moved toward the door. But then he turned back around. This would be the place. His movement caught William’s attention. The Wanderer saw the recognition on William’s face, as if he was about to say, “Hey, aren’t you the guy . . . ?”
There was nothing but coldness in The Wanderer’s gut.
He couldn’t swallow.
His arms tightened up.
He detected the smell of apples.
He lifted his gun and fired four times.
The Wanderer knew elation as never before. At last, he’d settled the score. At last, they were even. His euphoria lived but three short seconds before horror exploded around him, blowing him far away from reality. All he could see was red. The Wanderer was sure bits of flesh and blood had splattered onto him. He became aware once again of the gun in his hand. Had he done this? Had he shot a man at close range? Someone he knew? A fellow soldier? The Wanderer could smell the foxhole. He thought he had called for a medic, but of course the word remained trapped in his mind. There had to be a medic somewhere! What was taking so long? The Wanderer sank to his belly and tried to crawl. He would keep the kid warm until the medic arrived. If he could keep him warm, the kid might stand a chance. Oh, God! How could he have shot his own man? Then everything went black.
William escaped through his mortal wounds and stood apart from his fallen body. He didn’t quite get it at first; it took a moment for him to realize he was dead. He recognized the shooter as the guy who’d bumped into him out in the street. When he took a closer look, he knew with suddenness and with certainty that he and his killer were tied to one another, that this was their link in some chain-of-life sequence. But what that link was William did not know. He couldn’t look away from the commotion. He hoped they would be able to clean up his body before Dancy saw it. He didn’t want her to remember him this way.
There was no point in interrogating the perpetrator. A man with half a jaw is not easily understood. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; The Wanderer no longer knew his own name or any reason for what he had done. He had stayed sunk to the floor in the A&P until the police came to take him away. He ended up in an asylum for the criminally insane, where he kept to himself, speechless and bewildered.
The voices were finally silenced.
Dancy wondered how long she could keep supper warm. She’d prepared a birthday dinner, but the candles had burned down and the filé gumbo had simmered all it could. She kept looking at the phone, wishing it would ring. At quarter past seven, two policemen came to the door and asked if she was Mrs. William Arrow.
“There’s been an accident,” they said, and put her in the police car, where the smell of sweat and leather and cigarette smoke set her to wretched gagging. Hysteria nipped at Dancy’s neck and fear got a grip on her insides. Her teeth chattered and her throat became tight and she felt she was being strangled.
“What’s happened to William?” came the words of her panic. “Where is he? Where is he? Oh, please, please tell me. Why won’t you tell me? I’m begging you! Please!”
Alarm hammered its way into Dancy’s womb and terrorized Bonaventure; he did not recognize the sound of shattering frenzy. His mother’s screams took the form of an enraged demon that squeezed his chest and banged on his head. He sucked his thumb in full-blown panic. He pulled on his ears. He struggled to breathe.
In her bed one hundred ten miles away, Trinidad Prefontaine was awakened by chills caused by the coldness of an unknown terror.
Dancy’s screams were enough to make those officers get all choked up with the sad, sad pity of it all. They took her to the hospital, where they said they were sorry to tell her . . . and then, though their lips moved, she couldn’t seem to follow what they were saying. They had to repeat over and over that William had been killed while standing in line at the A&P, shot dead by a crazy man who’d gotten hold of a gun, a vagabond sort that nobody knew. There was heartbreak from the start, and now with the telling of things to the young widow that heartbreak split and multiplied, filling every inch of the room.
A merciless pounding caused a great tide within Dancy sending thundering waves to crash against her skull—a precursor of the earthquake that would rip her life open and take her into its slavering maw. The sharp edges of distress scraped her mind and her heart as she fell into the bottomless blackness of pain.
One of the policemen ran out, shouting, “Doctor! Doctor! We need a doctor right now!” But by the time one got there the newly widowed Dancy was asleep on the floor, knocked flat-out unconscious by the fist of shock. The doctor ordered her admitted, and an orderly laid her down on a bed. One floor below in the hospital morgue the remains of her husband lay still and stone cold.
William and Dancy did not breathe in unison, nor did his fingertips caress the skin of her arm. But fate did make one very kind adjustment. As they lay in the hospital, one above the other and fallen into different sleeps, some corner of the whole ragged tragedy turned back and gave them a chance to come closer. From behind closed lids each could see the other and could speak in a way that was utterly soundless. Love transcended loss long enough for them to find that the depth of feeling is best known in silence, because in the presence of such love words are never quite enough. William and Dancy faced each other across a misty divide, outside of their bodies and stripped down to their souls. Then the distance between them slowly melted away, and they reached out and touched in the softest embrace. So light were their souls that they rose up and floated out into the night amidst sparkling stars. They stayed in their floating embrace until morning, when Dancy woke up and William did not.
Dancy cried solid for six days and nights and then, in an unintentional mimicking of God, on the seventh day, she rested. She was convinced she would never be able to love that deep or cry that hard at any time ever again. Sorrow filled her completely, flowing through her veins like a second blood and making its way through the umbilical cord that attached her to her baby.
Bonaventure fell into a profoundly deep sleep. A tug came into his throat while he slept and the slightest touch visited his lips, tongue, and ears. Something stopped happening at the top of his trachea: the vocal cords inside his larynx were no longer meant to chop air into sound. It wasn’t that they were paralyzed. It was simply that a farewell had taken place between those cords and their purpose. However, it is important to note that their purpose had not been removed but was altered and transferred to another of his senses. Bonaventure would now hear as no other human could.