City of Brick and Shadow

by Tim Wirkus

  “We’re going to find this place,” Elder Toronto said.

  Just then, a battered, unlicensed cab rolled down the street toward the two missionaries. As it approached, the driver yelled through the open window asking if they needed a ride—he had the lowest fares in town. Elder Toronto stepped forward and said they didn’t need a ride but they could use some directions. The pirate cab rolled to a stop. The driver, a young guy with a halfhearted beard, said he also had the best price in town on directions. Elder Toronto told him they didn’t have any money.

  “Then maybe I don’t have any directions,” said the driver.

  Elder Toronto reached into his pocket. He had found a ten-real note in one of his desk drawers, which had served as the missionaries’ food and transportation budget for the past few days. But the money, scarce to begin with, had nearly run out. Elder Toronto pulled the two remaining bills from his pocket.

  “I’ve got two reaís,” said Elder Toronto.

  The driver looked at the bills and shook his head.

  “Seriously,” said Elder Toronto, “this is all I’ve got.”

  After a moment of deliberation, the driver scratched at his wispy beard and said that two reaís was better than nothing. He reached out and took the bills. Elder Toronto told the driver the name of the street.

  The driver said, “Yeah, I know where that is.” He said he had a friend who had lived there for a while, and it could barely even be called a street. It was really just a little row of shacks on a strip of land between the train tracks and the river.

  “By the tracks?” said Elder Toronto.

  “Yeah,” said the driver. “Is that a problem?”

  “What time is it?” said Elder Toronto

  The driver looked at a small digital clock taped onto the dashboard of his car.

  “It’s seven-fifty,” he said.

  The elders stepped back from the window of the car.

  “It’s too far,” said Elder Schwartz. “We’re not going to make it.”

  “We’re going to get there,” said Elder Toronto, and Elder Schwartz could see, much to his dismay, that his companion’s pugnacious spark had returned, that he wouldn’t be talked out of this.

  “Hey,” said the driver.

  The missionaries looked at him.

  He said, “You guys are like priests or something, right?”

  “Kind of,” said Elder Toronto. “We’re missionaries.”

  “Right, right,” said the driver. “I’ll tell you what. You guys hop in and I’ll drive you there for free. We’ll call it my good deed for the day, and you put in a nice word for me next time you say one of your prayers or whatever.”

  The missionaries said he had a deal and got into the car.

  As they drove along the neighborhood’s twisting dirt roads, teetering stacks of makeshift houses towering on either side of them, the driver regaled the two missionaries with the story of how he had acquired his car. In short, over the course of six months he had engineered a succession of shrewd exchanges, trading a pair of leather dress shoes he found on a curb for a seven-speed blender, which he had traded for a nail gun, which he had traded for a sewing machine, which he had traded for an amethyst ring, which he had traded for a lightly used leather armchair, which he had traded for a pool table, which he had traded for a motorcycle, which he had traded, ultimately, for this car, which had needed a few repairs, but was now running like a top. As his story reached its conclusion, they came to the end of the narrow dirt and cobblestone road they had rattled along for the past few blocks. When the dust settled, the elders could see the banks of the river just a few yards in front of them.

  “This is as far as I can take you,” said the driver. He pointed out a ramshackle footbridge that spanned the dirty river and told the elders they’d have to cross there. The missionaries thanked him and said that they really appreciated the ride. The driver said it was his pleasure and handed Elder Toronto a grimy square of cardstock with a name and phone number handwritten on the front.

  “Next time you have some money and need a ride somewhere, give me a call,” said the driver. “My name’s Wanderley. It’s on the card.”

  The missionaries thanked him again. He waved to them and then drove off, his little car jostling over the rutted dirt road and then disappearing into the mountain of dusty brick houses.

  The two elders stepped tentatively onto the narrow bridge, really just a ragtag collection of worm-eaten boards nailed precariously together, and began to cross. Beneath them, the river carried a miscellany of garbage on its filthy surface—candy wrappers; used condoms; a hairbrush; toilet paper; a lampshade; rats, living and dead; bloated scraps of cardboard; broken toys; rotten vegetables; the arm of a sofa. Elder Toronto claimed that, during the rainy season, he had even seen the stiff, dead body of a horse floating by a couple of miles downstream.

  As the two of them walked across the makeshift bridge, the boards rocked from side to side.

  “Maybe we should have crossed one at a time,” said Elder Schwartz.

  “Just keep moving,” said Elder Toronto from behind him, his arms held out like a tightrope walker’s.

  “How do we know this guy isn’t luring us here to kill us or something?” said Elder Schwartz.

  “Well, Elder Schwartz, we don’t,” said Elder Toronto, his powers of condescension now back in full force. The boards creaked dangerously and they started walking faster.

  “No, really,” said Elder Schwartz. “Is this some kind of ambush?”

  Elder Toronto allowed that this was a possibility, but there were much easier ways to kill them. Furthermore, he figured the guy wouldn’t come to a semi-public place with a handful of witnesses to make an appointment with his intended murder victims. Elder Schwartz said he guessed that made sense. He jumped the remaining couple of feet from the end of the bridge to the muddy riverbank, inadvertently jouncing the boards.

  “Careful,” said Elder Toronto, balancing on the wobbling bridge.

  After a moment of regaining his balance, he joined Elder Schwartz on the riverbank. They found the street, such as it was, just as Wanderley had described it—a narrow strip of land between the river and the train tracks. A series of plywood shacks occupied the land’s middle ground, presumably far enough away from the tracks to avoid being whisked away by the sucking wake of the train, and far enough from the river to avoid being carried off when the water level rose. A few yards away from the missionaries, a pack of bony stray dogs tussled over a discarded scrap of food. As the elders picked their way across the muddy ground, they were careful not to make eye contact with any of the snarling dogs. In front of the nearest shack, a middle-aged woman stood sweeping the dirt off of the mat in front of the door.

  “Evening,” said Elder Toronto.

  The woman looked up at him and greeted them quietly. The missionaries introduced themselves and said they were looking for house number twelve—did she know where it was? The woman nodded and said that it was the house five doors down from here. The missionaries thanked her and asked if they might stop by the woman’s house later and talk with her and her family about God’s plan of happiness. The woman shook her head and stepped inside, leaving the broom leaning against the door frame.

  They found the address just where the woman had said they would, a flimsy shack identical to the rest. The door—adorned with a hand-painted number twelve—hung crookedly in its frame.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” said Elder Schwartz.

  “It’s fine.”

  Elder Toronto knocked. The door was slightly ajar and swung in a couple of inches. The flickering of a candle lit the inside of the shack. Elder Toronto took a step back, waiting. The sun had gone down completely now, but some rusty light still lingered in the sky. No one came to the door. Elder Toronto knocked again. A few dirt-caked children kicked a ball around in front of the shack next door.

  “Hey,” said Elder Toronto, waving to the kids, “any of you all know the guy who lives
here? Is he home?”

  The kids giggled and continued their kicking of the ball.

  “I think we should go,” said Elder Schwartz.

  Elder Toronto said, “He’s probably just running a little late. This place is pretty out of the way.”

  “What could this guy even know about Marco Aurélio?” said Elder Schwartz.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” said Elder Toronto.

  They stood there for a few minutes watching the dogs back by the bridge. The tussle had escalated into a nasty fight with two of the dogs scratching and biting at each other, jumping and snarling, tearing into whatever chunk of their opponent’s flesh they could get their jaws around. A few people had stepped out of their homes to watch the scuffle. When the fight died down, the people went back inside. By this point, the color had drained out of the sky, leaving the small row of shacks by the river in darkness.

  “Let’s go,” said Elder Schwartz, who, with the setting of the sun, had gone from being broadly uncomfortable with the situation to being certain they were about to pass a point of no return. He tapped Elder Toronto on the shoulder. “Please?”

  “Hang on,” said Elder Toronto.

  He stepped up to the crack in the door and peered inside. He turned back to Elder Schwartz and whispered that somebody was in there.

  “Well, it seems like they don’t want to answer the door,” Elder Schwartz whispered, turning to go and hoping his companion would follow suit. He didn’t, and Elder Schwartz remained in place.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Elder Toronto, pushing the door open cautiously. He stepped inside. Elder Schwartz followed reluctantly.

  “Sir?” said Elder Toronto.

  The candlelight revealed the tall, thin man in the brown suit lying on a cot against the plywood wall. A small table, the only other furniture in the room, held the remains of a candle that provided light to the tiny shack. The man’s feet hung over the end of the cot, exposing the pale skin between his drooping gray socks and his too-short suit pants. His brown suit was rumpled and torn at the seams, but it was the thing above his shirt collar, the thing that used to be the tall, thin man’s head—now a smashed, pulpy mess of grays and purples and reds—that sent both missionaries sprinting out of the shack, running toward the dubious safety of the bridge.

  CHAPTER 4

  Two months earlier, the train jostled along the tracks, carrying Elder Schwartz toward his new, dreaded assignment in Vila Barbosa. He crouched on the gritty train car floor with his arms wrapped tightly around his luggage, a squatting embrace that had proved the only effective method in preventing his unwieldy suitcase from toppling over and banging the shins of a fellow passenger on the overcrowded car. He had tried to pack well this time, tried to make the process of hauling all his belongings via the city’s busy public transportation system as painless as possible. It seemed, however, that he had failed. Among other things, he had accidentally packed all of his books at the top of his suitcase, realizing his mistake too late to remedy it. He couldn’t have made his luggage harder to handle if he had tried.

  The train lurched to a dramatic stop, toppling Elder Schwartz onto his back with his suitcase crashing down on top of him. His fellow passengers, trying to keep their own balance, glared down at him. Elder Toronto leaned over, righted the fallen suitcase, and helped Elder Schwartz stand up.

  “Let me help you with that,” said Elder Toronto.

  “It’s fine,” said Elder Schwartz. “I can handle it myself.”

  • • •

  Earlier that day, their partnership got off to a rocky start. After the transfer meeting, they left the mission office and walked to the nearest train station, Elder Schwartz dragging his suitcase behind him.

  The station, a modernist work of concrete and glass, bustled with crowds, even though rush hour had long passed. People had places to go. The commuters milled around the platform, some of them jockeying for spots at the edge so they could be first to board. The missionaries hung back, standing next to a concrete column as part of Elder Toronto’s strategy to get the luggage on the train as painlessly as possible. His plan involved jumping into the flow of people at just the right angle and just the right moment to take advantage of the force of the moving crowd rather than fight against it. The whole thing sounded dubious to Elder Schwartz, but he agreed to go along with it. As they stood there, Elder Toronto alternated between carefully observing the jostling crowd of commuters, and glancing down the dark tunnel where their train would eventually emerge.

  Elder Schwartz looked around at the clean, almost sterile architecture of the station. On a wall to his right, he noticed a plaque with a masonic symbol on it. He pointed it out to Elder Toronto, just to get some conversation going.

  “See that?” said Elder Schwartz.

  “The masonic symbol?” said Elder Toronto.

  “Yeah,” said Elder Schwartz. “Elder Pelourinho told me that his trainer, Elder Brands, once met a guy and saw that he was wearing a ring with the mason symbol on it. And you know how sometimes, the mason symbol has a G in the middle of it? Well, Elder Brands asked the guy if he would tell him what the G stood for, and the guy laughed a little and said no. But then Elder Brands asked, Does it stand for Gadianton? And as soon as Elder Brands said that, the guy jumped out of his seat, and his face was all red, and he kicked the elders out of his house and told them never to come back. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “It never happened,” said Elder Toronto, looking down the tunnel for an approaching train.

  “No,” said Elder Schwartz, “Elder Brands told me, and he says—”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Elder Toronto, looking back now at the crowd of commuters.

  “But don’t you think that—”

  “No,” said Elder Toronto. “It’s so stupid it makes my head hurt. It’s not even worth discussing.”

  He looked back at the train tunnel. Even though Elder Schwartz had been warned about his companion, Elder Toronto’s response still stung. He wanted to get off to a good start, though, so he tried a new gambit.

  “Did you pick up any letters from your family this morning?” he asked.

  As soon as he said it, he realized his mistake.

  Every missionary knew what had happened to Elder Toronto’s family. This was back at the beginning of his mission when he was still in the training center, the CTM. Apparently, one icy Idaho evening, Elder Toronto’s family—his mom, his dad, his two younger sisters—were driving down the highway to visit some friends in the next town over. Nobody saw it happen, but the first people to arrive on the scene found a semi-truck jackknifed across both lanes of the highway and the Torontos’ car upside down in a ditch, all four passengers dead inside.

  As soon as he was notified of this, the president of the CTM called Elder Toronto into his office, gave him the news, and told him he could interrupt his mission to fly back to the States for the funeral—the church would cover all his travel expenses. In fact, he could fly back for the funeral and then take as much time as he needed. He shouldn’t feel any pressure to come back to the mission until he was ready.

  But Elder Toronto turned down the opportunity to go home, and when the CTM president insisted, Elder Toronto dug in his heels. He refused to leave the mission. He said he didn’t see the point. And so, on the morning of his family’s funeral, he sat in his Portuguese class singing songs about the difference between ser and estar, a rictus grin plastered to his face.

  Of course, all of this only made Elder Toronto less approachable, his fellow missionaries unsure how to act around that kind of trauma.

  Elder Schwartz braced himself for the inevitable backlash.

  “Nope,” said Elder Toronto, his expression steady. “No letters.”

  The horn of an approaching train sounded and he turned to Elder Schwartz.

  “Pick up your bags,” he said. “This is us.”

  • • •

  Now, on the train, Elder Schwartz sc
rambled to keep his luggage from spilling across the car.

  “Are you sure you don’t want help?” said Elder Toronto.

  “I’m fine,” said Elder Schwartz.

  He didn’t argue, though, when Elder Toronto placed the suitcase between them so they could stabilize it with their legs. Just before the train began to move again, a young man clutching at his side boarded their train car. When the doors closed, the young man squeezed his way to the middle of the car. He raised his free hand in the air and yelled that if he could have a few minutes of everybody’s time, he would really appreciate it. A few people turned to look, but most of the car’s passengers kept their eyes fixed on their newspapers, their windows, or their hands. The young man continued, his hand gripping his abdomen.

  “To those of you who have good health,” he began, in an over-the-top preacherly tone, “I recommend that you treasure it. Since I was a small child, I have been afflicted with constant illness and suffering. My mother remembers many nights that I cried myself to sleep with pain. We come from humble circumstances and my poor mother was forced to watch me suffer, as she couldn’t afford adequate medical treatment.”

  As the young man’s speech progressed, a distinct rotting smell permeated the car. Elder Toronto leaned toward Elder Schwartz.

  “Have you ever seen one of these before?” he said.

  Elder Schwartz shook his head.

  “Keep watching,” said Elder Toronto.

  The young man had paused, apparently to compose himself, and then continued.

  “Like I said, I’ve been suffering since I was a child. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. Then, a few weeks ago, I met a doctor who said he knew what afflicted me and that he was willing to treat me. He was aware of my circumstances and offered his services for free. At the time, I thought this man must be a saint, but he has since turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a demon in human form.”