Rumors from the Lost World (4 page)

She straightened, the barest flicker of an exasperated smile fighting against her mood, and I tossed the bunch down to her, flower by flower. One for Elizabeth, who died in 1914; one for David, 1922; one for Robert, 1936; one for Frank, Jr., 1939, one for Thomas, who was still alive, but who would die in the war, in 1944; one for Anthony, who died the year after my mother, in 1948; one for Leonard, who had three strokes and passed away in 1959; one for Louis, who was institutionalized for years before a fatal heart attack in 1979; one for Richard, whose liver gave out in 1983; one for your Uncle Joe, one for your Aunt Mary, another for Aunt Emily, your namesake, and one for me. One for Papa, one for Mama, who gathered them all up and found a vase.

I wasn't even twenty when all of that happened. Now I'm close to seventy. Time flies, doesn't it? That wartime night, though, when I was still nineteen, I remember I turned on the radio. While Mama filled the vase with water and bright flowers, the radio filled the room with scratchy big band music. So I jitterbugged, working off my anger with twirls and acrobatic maneuvers. Had Papa seen me, the USO would have been history. Mama stared at me for a minute, not exactly smiling but with her full lips a little lopsided. That was a kind of victory. Then she motioned me over and we got to work again, syncopating our business to the quick tempo of jazz.

T
im took off his jacket. “They're evicting a man across the street,” he said. The wind whistled between his teeth and he squeezed his arms, rubbing out April air still too unpredictable to trust, though it promised a journey to a warmer place.

Russell hoisted himself from the couch where he had spent the afternoon and pulled open the Venetian blinds on the only window that faced the street. Four men and a woman worked their way down the stairs with a battered chest of drawers, an old flowered couch and a television set. The man they were evicting had on military fatigues and a pair of earmuffs—its metal strap was wired across his bald head like a brace.

Even from the window, where Russell's breath made puffs on the pane, the bald man looked in boisterous good health, leaning against a fire hydrant, big gut slopping over his pants, fingers uncurling and curling. Next to him stood a tall man with a clipboard, in a windbreaker and baseball cap. He nodded as the bald man spoke, then turned away to invoice odd pieces of furniture near a pickup truck on the curb.

“What a thing to do to a man.” Tim scratched at his chin. “You think that guy has a place to stay tonight?“

“Tell you what. I'll check it out. I haven't been outside all day.”

He came over and put a hand on Russell's arm. “You all right?“

“Yeah, I'm all right.”

“Looks like you're getting evicted,” Russell said to the bald man.

“Yeah?” He folded his arms and leaned back against the hydrant. “You're a piece of work. You make a habit of coming on to people like me?“

Russell pointed across the street. “You see that window, the one on the third floor with the flower pot?“

“That your place?” He rested his hands on his belly and pursed his lips.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” He took off his ear muffs, leaving a red slash across the top of his head. Russell was using a medication which increased hair loss, so the shining dome fascinated him. It looked polished. It reflected a little of the late light. “How much room you and your wife got?“

“I'm staying with a friend on a temporary basis.”

“Ah.” The bald man studied the flowerpot with more interest. “You making an offer, or what?” The man with the clipboard moved away. Two of his workers were horsing around. They looked like the sort of kids who make a little money with temporary work, and the other two looked like drunks. The woman sat in the cab of the pickup truck, motor running.

“We've got a sofa,” Russell said. “It's good for one night.”

The man with the clipboard, his head a little cocked, turned toward them. He waved the clipboard. “I'll give you a hundred for all of it.” He removed his baseball cap and stared into the sky. The streetlamps winked on.

“What you say to that?” the bald man asked.

Besides the couch, the chest of drawers and the television set, which actually looked like a good one, there were assorted odds and ends, a cardboard box, a sleeping roll, and a knapsack. “Keep the sleeping roll and the pack, take the money. It's a fair offer.”

“That sound good?” the bald man asked.

The man with the clipboard put on his baseball cap and held out his hand. “Deal.” He counted the money. Behind him, a blue neon cross blinked from the corner building. Big block letters proclaimed that the building was the home of Our Redeemer Universal Church. The woman in the truck smoked her cigarette and studied herself in the rearview mirror. While the crew packed the truck she put some kind of cold cream on her face. One college kid grumbled to the man with the clipboard.

“Can I help with anything?” Russell said. “You want me to carry that box?”

“This is my filing system, amigo.” The cardboard box rested on his gut as they walked. Russell heard things moving around. “Nobody touches it. Nobody. That's why I won't stay at the church. They'll separate me from everything I own. They don't know the information in here could bring down whole governments.” He jiggled the box. “Including our own.”

Tim opened the door. “Make yourself at home,” he said. “They've been evicting people all over the city. Everything's becoming a god-damn townhouse.”

“You don't know what the hell you're talking about, old man,” the bald man said.

Tim's pupils got bright. “What's that you say?”

The bald man walked to the refrigerator. “You know why they gave me the heave-ho?” He popped open a can of beer. “Because I told those sons-of-bitches they could chew on my ear all day and they wouldn't get squat. That place wasn't fit for roaches.”

Tim's mouth dropped open. Face cast into a glower, he pursued the man. “You mean you got money?”

The bald man sized him up. “No, old man, that's not what I mean. I mean I have experience. I've been to Spain, I've seen the bullfights.” He swigged down his beer. “I've been to Ethiopia, I was in the Nam for four years. That was a hell of a long time ago. Since then I've been everywhere you've ever heard of and some places you haven't.” He walked over to Russell, ignoring Tim, and thumped him on the chest. “Where
you
been, amigo? You ever been to the Nam?”

“The name's Russell,” he said. “I've been at loose ends.”

“Is that right? Loose ends?” The bald man picked up the phone. “Look, I'm gonna order some pizza. There's a place down the street that delivers.”

“You up for pizza, Russell?” Tim asked, concerned.

“Why not?” He nodded to the bald man. “Pizza. With everything.”

When it arrived, the bald man paid for it and spread some newspaper on the coffee table. “Let's catch the news while we eat,” he said.

“I haven't read that paper yet,” Tim said.

“So. You haven't read the paper.” The bald man screwed up his face as though working out a problem in calculus. “I tell you what, amigo. Let's leave this paper here to protect the table. It's nothing but ads, anyway.”

“You don't seem to understand,” Tim said. He picked up the pizza and folded the paper. “You're a guest. You don't tell me what to do.”

“Look,” Russell said, “let's turn on the TV and see the news.”

Tim squatted down to adjust the set. The bald man sat on the couch with his arms outspread and his feet resting on the coffee table, nearly tipping it over. “So tell me, amigos.” He grinned a big, goofy cartoon of a smile, his mouth stretched preternaturally wide, his bad teeth sucking in the light. Something gold glinted in his mouth. “Why the Good Samaritans?”

“What's your name?” Russell asked. “You haven't introduced yourself.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Jordan. Robert Jordan. You want me to believe you don't know that?”

Tim and Russell looked at each other. Tim got everybody a beer and they ate the pizza. A woman, a reporter, stood on the manicured lawn of a Georgetown mansion. “The two delegates are due to arrive in an hour, to meet with several hundred supporters of their war. Almir Lopez, the chief delegate, will then proceed to Capitol Hill to talk with a group of representatives who favor increased aid.”

“That's old news,” Jordan said, licking cheese from his fingers. “I know Lopez: a rapist, a murderer, a pervert. I could tell you stories that would uncurl a pig's ass.”

“I'd believe them,” Tim said, friendly again. “I've heard those people are thugs. We shouldn't give them a cent.”

“Those people just want their country back,” Jordan said. “Same as the Nam. You namby-pambies were smoking dope and grooving to the Beatles or some shit like that, you didn't have the guts to do what had to be done over there.” He leaned forward. “Listen, old man. I've been there. I'm talking from experience, I'm not bullshitting.”

“Look, I'm not up to quarrels. Let's change the subject,” Russell said. “So. You don't believe in Good Samaritans?”

Jordan stared until Russell looked away. “Where's the bathroom?” He pushed himself up and rubbed his belly. “I need some Maalox.”

Russell pointed to the hallway. “Look in the medicine cabinet.”

“You think it's a good idea to let him poke around like that?” Tim asked. They had a stash of marijuana behind the towels. Sometimes Russell would smoke to feel better.

Jordan touched him on the arm again when he returned. “Who the pills for?”

“They're mine. I've been sick.”

“That's tough luck.” He studied Tim's sparsely-furnished apartment, the couch and TV, the two easy chairs, a desk near the window, a dinette set by the kitchen. His eyes settled on a framed photograph of a plot of land with an ocean view, some Spanish land Tim's grandparents once owned. “Myself, I've only got the gout.” He placed a hand on Russell's shoulder. “During surgery I contracted blood poisoning. That precipitated it. A goddamn dirty scalpel at a clinic in Bhaunagar, on the Gulf of Cambay.”

Tim frowned. “The gout?”

“The gout, old man.” Jordan made a steeple with his fingers and bowed. “I suppose you think you know about the gout, right?” He smiled. “About your boy here, though. How long does he have?”

“What makes you think he's my boy?” Tim said. “He's sick, that's all. He's having some tests. What the hell you up to?”

Jordan went to the refrigerator for another beer. “That land on the wall,” he said from the kitchen. “Whose land is that? That your land, Russell? Or does it belong to the old man?” Change clinking in his pockets, he belched and sat next to Russell on the couch. His eyes moved a little loosely in their sockets.

“Listen. We wanted to help you out,” Russell said. “We also wanted to engage you in conversation. I'm sick and I'm bored. If you don't want to call it a good deed, just call it boredom.”

“Forget it.” He gently touched Russell's shoulder and yawned. “Look. I haven't slept in three days. Why don't I sleep?” He laid back his head.

“Hear what he's saying,” Tim said. He picked up the folded newspaper and slapped it on the coffee table. “I don't like this kind of bullshit.”

Jordan opened his mouth in surprise and crossed his eyes. Then he was out like a light, even beginning to snore. Tim looked at Russell, who knew Tim was gauging how difficult it would be to drag the bald man to the door, how much trouble it might take to call the cops. “To hell with it,” he finally mumbled.

Russell went to the spare bedroom. Later he dreamed about an old Mediterranean pension. There was bougainvillea, a patio, a tile roof the color of deep rust. From the patio he could see water. A man in bathing trunks brought him a tall drink. “Will there be anything else?” he asked. “Sit with me,” Russell said. “I can't go inside, I have to study the water.” The water changed color several times each day, he had to see the changes. It changed from the color of bluebells to the stained green of military fatigues, then darkened at night to ink.

When Russell came to himself, Jordan was in his room, sitting on the far side of the bed. For a moment, still almost asleep, Russell closed his eyes and expected his mother to clatter early-morning dishes or his father to sing in the shower. Russell had gone to western landlocked Canada instead of Vietnam and didn't come back until it was safe. That broke things with his father. His father told him once he couldn't show his own face at the main street cafe in the small town where he lived because he didn't want to have to fight the man who called his son a pussy. But Russell never forgot how his father sang in the shower. His throat would gurgle on low notes, straighten out, then lose its way as it climbed the scale.

Jordan ticked a fingernail on a water glass jammed between his legs. “I thought you'd never wake up,” he said, voice full of beer.

“What time is it?” The smell of beer and pizza mingled with the odor of Russell's own perspiration. “Where's Tim?”

Jordan pulled a penlight from a cargo pocket. “You decided to be
kind,
is that it?” He played with the penlight, pointing it at the ceiling, flicking it off and on. “I would hate to think,
Russell,
that I'm the beneficiary of your goddamn pity. If there's one thing I don't need and won't stand for, it's goddamn pity.” Spidery lines sprouted around his eyes, he smiled without any humor, his jaw locked and teeth clenched. His mouth sagged, each breath a little struggle. “I've got something I want to show you,” he said, and pulled out a billfold, stained to the color of soil. He waved it in Russell's face. After digging in it, as though it were a diplomat's pouch as large as the world, he handed Russell a grimy faded snapshot, worn thin like onionskin. “My boy,” he said. “I've got a boy, too.”