by Mendy Sobol
The bus rolled on, down Route 3, past the Meadowlands sports complex, a stadium, an arena, a racetrack where my memory held only vacant landfill and the smell of the Secaucus slaughterhouses. Like millions of commuters, I smiled a dark smile, thinking a New Jersey thought, wondering if Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamster’s Union leader who disappeared without a trace, was entombed beneath one of the massive concrete structures. But every thought, every memory, was little more than another way of not thinking about where I was, what I was doing.
The 88 pulled off the highway and onto the streets of Nutley, then Bloomfield’s north side, heading for its south side, the side bordering Applewood, past Brookfield Gardens, the dilapidated, overgrown garden apartments where my Aunt Sophie raised two sons, David and Ivan. The three of us had mastered every inch of that complex, exploring each summer the urban wilds of the brook running behind the apartments, contracting body-covering rashes of poison oak and swollen mosquito bites, seeking adventure like it was our religion.
The next landmark was Bloomfield Center, two short blocks from Troy Towers Apartments, home to Uncle Joel. Straining my eyes upward, I looked through the 88’s sooty windows, up, up the building’s fourteen stories to my uncle’s balcony, hoping for a glimpse of him. Too quickly my view was cut off by the Erie Lackawanna Railroad trestle underpass, marking the passage onto Prospect Street, and finally, into Applewood, then quickly past Applewood High School, my high school, and into the heart of the Hilversum College campus.
I stood, hoisting my backpack, pulling the signal cord where Ely Place met Prospect Street. Lost in thoughts, memories, dreams, I hadn’t paid attention to my fellow passengers. Stepping into the aisle, shuffling toward the front door like a sailor against the bus’s rocking momentum, I began looking at the faces around me. The teenagers rising from the seats across from me were black. Everyone I passed was black. The bus driver was black. I’d spent thirty years in Vietnam. A hundred times each day my pale skin, round green eyes, and dirty blonde hair invited curious stares. I never expected I’d feel that visible, that out of place in Applewood.
The 88 rolled to a smooth stop, the front door folding open with a rush of compressed air. I’d barely reached the weedy sidewalk when the teenager stepping off behind me touched my shoulder.
“Hey, man, got a tissue?”
Shifting my backpack, I fished for Kleenex in my jeans’ pocket, handing him a couple. Staring at me, he wiped his nose, dropping the tissues on the sidewalk.
“Change. How ‘bout some change?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t hold out on me. You got some in that bag.”
Another passenger, much bigger, stepped from the bus as it pulled away. “C’mon, Tee,” he said. “Leave ‘m alone.”
Tee stood facing me, smiling. “I’m just playin’. But we be seein’ you later on.”
Tee crossed Prospect, catching up with his friend, joking, pounding the tops of each other’s clenched fists as the big man said, “See the scars on that motherfucker’s face? That is not someone you want to fuck with!”
I thought I should get moving, walk the other way. But I couldn’t stop staring after them. That’s when I realized there was no one else on the street. In the middle of what should have been a bustling college campus, there were no people. Just trash blowing down Prospect Street, trash blowing in the light summer wind, trash everywhere, ghostly evidence of human traffic.
I looked around at the old Jersey brick buildings, seeing nothing familiar. Broken, boarded up windows, fallen gutters and downspouts, dead ivy and overgrown weeds. And graffiti. Red, green, black, and yellow-sprayed numbers, initials, and symbols covering every surface. Hilversum, the Lutheran college founded in the century before the twentieth, the lush and pretty campus where I’d kissed Maria after July Fourth fireworks, the safe place to get off the 88 from New York after midnight and walk the last mile home beneath stone arches and rose-covered trellises, was gone, just plain gone.
I walked along Prospect Street past more abandoned buildings. Passing traffic made me feel better, then worse, as I felt the stares from lowered car windows. What if WFMH isn’t here anymore? I thought. How could it be? There’s no college, no campus, no Hilversum. There doesn’t even seem to be a city. Maybe I should wait here until the 88 comes by on its return trip to Port Authority. Maybe I should go home. The hope of finding something familiar from my past, or from my dreams, the hope of finding Toby, kept me moving.
At the corner of Prospect Street and Springdale Avenue, I came upon Roxy’s, a small variety store, and went inside hoping someone there could answer my questions, hoping for some human contact. The store was empty except for the woman behind the counter, who put out her hand and said, “Welcome to Roxy’s!”
“Hello,” I said, shaking her hand gratefully. “I’m Paul, Paul Simmons.”
“How do you do, Mr. Paul Simmons. I’m Roxy, Roxy Warnock,” she said, mimicking me with a chuckle. Roxy was thin, the color of cocoa, closer to my parents’ generation than to mine, her accent hinting at a childhood in Savannah or Charleston.
I sat at the counter on a squeaky stool, mushroomed aluminum bolted to a round, red, vinyl seat patched and re-patched with duct tape. The counter was old and used, marred and scratched, but like everything in Roxy’s, immaculately clean. Any chance its Formica surface would ever shine again had passed, but that didn’t stop Roxy from polishing and polishing with a green-striped dishtowel the whole time we talked.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you some food, Paul. The grill’s shut down, and I’ll be closing soon.” The lingering aroma of French fries reminded me I hadn’t eaten since my flight.
“That’s okay, Roxy,” I said. “I grew up in Applewood, and I took the bus in from New York so I could spend the afternoon in my old hometown. I’m wondering if you can tell me what happened to the college?”
“Hilversum’s been gone since ’94,” she said. “A hundred years and they packed up and walked away. Too much crime, not enough students. Biggest thing ever happened in Applewood. Just about closed me up, too, with no college kids around.”
“What about the Hilversum radio station, WFMH?”
“I don’t know about any radio station. But if it was part of the college, it’s sure gone along with everything else. There’s no one in those old buildings except squatters, pushers, and copper-pipe thieves.”
Roxy saw the look on my face, reached for a scratched but shimmering Coca Cola glass, and filled it from the fountain.
“Be my guest to a soda while you wait for the next New York bus. It stops at the corner around four o’clock. I usually close when my grandsons come by after school, but we’ll stick around awhile. We can’t stay too late though. We’re expected for dinner when their mom and dad get home from work. But Paul, don’t miss that bus. The next one isn’t until ten, and this neighborhood is no place for anyone after dark.”
Slumped at a small Formica table in the back corner of Roxy’s, sipping my soda, I waited, passing the time reading a week-old copy of the Applewood Record. It was the same weekly newspaper I grew up reading, but much had changed. A story on page four recounted the results of post-war democratic elections in Indonesia, while another heralded the return of a dozen AEF troopers to Applewood with the headline, They’re Coming Home! The front page covered news of Applewood’s own raging war. Lonel White, carjacked from her Renshaw Street driveway. Rasheed Robinson, mugged and pistol-whipped on Central Avenue by two men wearing ski masks. Arraignments of forty county school administrators, teachers, and Board of Education members for conspiring to make false workers’ compensation claims.
I tried focusing on my own situation and on Toby, the fugitive. Because of a two-word communiqué, I’d traveled nine thousand miles, twelve time zones, forty-two hours, and arrived finding no Hilversum, no WFMH, no Toby, nothing I could identify as my hometown. But I kept turning the pages, kept reading.
Clean up of a fuel-oil spill caused by the theft of copper pipe from
one of Hilversum’s padlocked residence halls. The burglary of a dozen new typewriters from the city’s public library. And the city council’s decision to foreclose on twenty-two hundred homes for unpaid property taxes—that story warranting only four short paragraphs at the bottom of page three.
But then there were the children. Fifth graders Shanna Jackson and Jamaal Whitaker honored at a statewide science fair. Selena Ortiz coordinating Middle Schoolers Against Violence. The Applewood High School valedictorian, the first in a decade who didn’t face the military draft, looking serious in cap and gown, diploma in hand, on her way to college with a full scholarship to Rutgers.
There were stories about gang murders and drug busts. I remembered a police sergeant’s advice to my father when a brick came crashing through my parents’ dining room window a month before they moved to Colorado—“Buy a gun,” he said. But there was also news of everyday affairs of everyday people, starting businesses, volunteering in schools, holding charity garage sales, scrubbing graffiti gang tags off signs and buildings no matter how many times they reappeared. And a new mayor, a lifelong Applewood resident, promising to rebuild and restore the city.
There was news of decay and crime. There was also news of hope.
The golden bells above Roxy’s front door jingled, and two slender, cherub-cheeked, neatly dressed boys, one not yet a teenager, the other no more than seven, came in holding hands. “Hi, grandma!” they chorused, jumping on side-by-side counter stools, quickly snatching up the two glasses of Cherry Coke that Roxy had set on the counter moments before.
“Terrell, James, say hello to Mr. Simmons. He grew up in Applewood, just like you. He came looking for the Hilversum radio station that’s gone along with the rest of the college.”
Two sets of deep brown eyes focused on me as the boys realized they weren’t alone with their grandmother. Shyly, two voices chimed, “Hello, Mr. Simmons.” Then Terrell, the older brother, said, “Mr. Simmons, that radio station, it’s still there. Right up the street and around the corner on Glenhaven.”
“How do you know that, Terrell?” Roxy said.
“Grandma, I’ve seen white people coming in and out of there, and heard all kinds of crazy music.”
“Are you sure?” I said stupidly.
“Yes, sir, I’m sure.”
Roxy beamed at me, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m sorry I told you wrong, Paul. But if Terrell says it’s there, it’s there. Looks like you won’t make that four o’clock bus after all.” Her smile faded. “But you remember what I said about being around here after dark.”
I tucked the Record under my arm and put my hand out, taking first Roxy’s hand, then James’s, then Terrell’s, enveloping their slim, dark fingers. “Thank you,” I said. “How much for the soda and paper?”
“Paul, I told you. You’re my guest today.”
“Thank you,” I said again. Reaching into my pocket, I took out two shiny, aluminum, one-dong Vietnamese coins, handing one to each of Roxy’s grandsons. “These are from Vietnam, the country where I live.”
“Thank you, Mr. Simmons,” Terrell said, palming the coin, sliding it into his pocket.
“Thank you,” little James said, staring at the coin’s strange, shimmering surface.
“Can I ask you two a question?”
“Sure.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“W. E. B. Du Bois School!” they proudly answered.
I’d read in the Applewood Record about the renaming of schools for African-American leaders and celebrities. Madison School had become the Ray Charles School. Maple Street School was Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Academy. Du Bois School, once upon a time, had been Columbus School.
I turned quickly to the door, but Roxy saw my eyes filling with tears.
“Mr. Simmons?” It was James. “What happened to your face?”
“Quiet, James,” Roxy said. “You let Mr. Simmons go.”
“It’s okay,” I said, one hand on the door, the other brushing at my eyes. “I was in a fire.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
James looked at me, looking past the scars, past the pain, looking for clues to something else. “And I was wondering…”—Terrell nudged his brother with an elbow, but James didn’t notice—“…are you white?”
There was only the briefest moment of silence before Roxy and Terrell burst out laughing. But James wasn’t laughing. He looked serious and solemn.
“Yes, James,” I said. “Yes, I am.”
Chapter Thirty-Six: Paul
Glenhaven Avenue had once been the most beautiful street in Applewood. Large, elegant homes and cool, soft shade under giant oaks and maples made rounding the corner from Springdale, a busy commercial street, like passing through the entrance to a secret forest. The homes were still there, but with doors roughly boarded, windows barred or smashed. Untended trees dropped branches across roofs and porches. Lawns were dead brown, newspapers and fast food wrappings the forlorn flowers on thorny, dying bushes of rose and azalea.
The corner house looked like the rest. Not one of the larger, grander homes, but big enough, stately enough for the professor’s family who built it near the end of the First World War. It shared styles from the past with other Glenhaven homes—Georgian columns, small-paned French windows—and features from their present too. Storm-broken oak limbs hanging from their mother tree and resting on the roof, overgrown weed-filled yard, steel bars across first-floor windows. It looked a lot like the house where Meg and I once sat in a living room stuffing WFMH fundraising envelopes with a dozen other volunteers, listening to John Lennon sing Working Class Hero on giant studio monitors. It also looked abandoned.
I didn’t feel anything dramatic, no heart-sinking, knee-buckling emotions. I didn’t feel anything at all walking up the weed-choked red brick path, up one rotted wooden step, standing before the peeling front door. And seeing the empty doorbell socket, knocking first with my knuckles, then pounding with the side of my fist, and finally hearing the rattling of locks and latches and chains, and at last the throw of a well-oiled deadbolt.
If Terrell and James appeared to me like cherubs, the face I saw in the narrow opening between door and jam was surely that of an angel. Blonde hair, hazel eyes, skin the color of fresh-cut peach. She looked at me through the crack, up and down, carefully, cautiously. Then swinging the door wide, smiling a smile both warm and wise-ass, she said, “It’s about time, Tesla. I’m Kelly. C’mon in.”
Kelly relocked what looked like at least a half-dozen latches and led the way up creaking stairs, her tight denim jeans, loose denim jacket, bounding ahead of me.
“I’m so glad I got to be here when you showed up. He’s gonna freak!”
Jumping the last two steps onto the landing, pushing through a door, she shouts, “He’s here!” And before I can follow, a giant blocks the doorway, before I can move, a bear envelopes me.
“I guess I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.” Kelly, voice softer than her words, moved past us down the stairway.
There on the landing we hugged each other. We hugged each other until, his big hands on my shoulders, Toby gently pushed me back to arms-length. The passing of years and lots of plastic surgery had changed almost everything about him. Clean-shaven, buzz cut, forty pounds leaner, ears, lips, nose, brow, reshaped. The flowing mane and tail of a thundering black thoroughbred tattooed on his right shoulder were visible beneath the cut-off sleeve of his WFMH tee shirt. But the towering height, bowed shoulders, angled neck, wizard’s eyes, were still the same, still Toby. I looked in his eyes and felt something come alive in me, a switch-thrown surge of energy overcoming all the miles, all the fatigue, all the emotions of the past few days. Thinking a thousand things to say at once, I didn’t say anything. Toby broke the silence.
“Tesla,” he said. “Definitely Tesla.”
Toby hauled me against his chest, bear hugging me again. I did the only things I could do—hug Toby back, and
for the second time that day, feel my eyes fill with tears. Tears for Toby, our friendship, the dead college, my hometown, the Vietnamese people and the American veterans still dying from cancers caused by a war long over. Tears for myself and tears for Meg, who should have been there with us. Tears, because unlike in my dreams, I could really hold my best friend, miraculously before me, flesh and blood. But tears because I also knew that Toby would soon slip away, this time forever, leaving me again with only my dreams.
At last we let each other go, looked in each other’s eyes, saw each other’s tears. Toby’s new mouth was nearly a straight line, but suddenly the old quick smile was there.
“Tesla, you look like hell!”
The rest of the night was crazy.
Toby spoke first, telling me about his last two years. After exhausting every underground refuge, he’d run to the only place he could think of. A place he’d visited with me during our college vacations. A place incredibly still there, still run by radio radicals.
“Remember Hungary’s Cardinal Mindszenty? After the ‘56 uprisin’ against the Russians, he lived at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, a refugee on foreign soil inside his own country, afraid if he stepped outside the commies would grab him. That’s how it’s been for me. Cared for by DJs and staffers, program directors and volunteers, never goin’ outside, not even at night, the best kept secret in America, the most wanted man of the century.”
“That’s incredible, Toby! But where does the money come from? Are they supporting you, too?”
Toby laughed, his eyes twinkling. “No, Tesla. Money is the easy part. Kelly brings me the Racing Form, I run Thoroughbred, and Kelly spends her weekends at Belmont, Aqueduct, and Monmouth Park. I’m supportin’ them!”
“No way!”
“Yup, you and I are fuckin’ geniuses. Thoroughbred works!”
“But what do you run Thoroughbred on?”
