A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

by John Gregory Brown

  Exasperated, Marge sighed, the first time Henry had known her to express anything but optimism and faith. She slowly shook her head and started the car.

  “It’s a bottomless pit,” she said. “That family—not just Mrs. Hughes but all her grandchildren and cousins and such. I’ve watched them make use of county services for years. There’s not a moment someone from that family’s not incarcerated or fighting with Social Services or claiming their WIC card didn’t arrive.”

  Henry listened. Who was it who’d said that true charity was for the undeserving? Maybe he’d seen it on one of those signs out in front of a church.

  “I just want to do something for them,” Henry told Marge. “Just as you did for me.”

  “I understand,” Marge said. She did not point out again that he didn’t have five thousand dollars to give to Mrs. Hughes. But he could earn it, couldn’t he? He believed that he could.

  “You didn’t ask that man to jump in front of your car,” Marge said. “I know he was trying to do something for his family, but he wasn’t thinking one moment, was he, about what he was doing to you.”

  Henry let Marge talk, let her go on and on about it. He figured he could propose to Latangi that he clean the rooms and do whatever gardening or grounds work needed to be done. He could deliver, as he had today, the import items she managed to sell. He could be the Spotlight’s night watchman, its handyman or superintendent, though of course he recognized how ridiculous such a notion was. Before being of any use, he’d have to learn how to do practically every single task the job required—how to fix a leaky faucet, stop a running toilet, replace a cracked window, repair a flickering lamp or broken TV. He thought of Lacey Gaudet’s father, the arm he’d thrown over Henry’s shoulder.

  He’d needed a father.

  Maybe he still needed one, or at least still needed someone to say to him, Here is what happened. Why hadn’t his father stepped forward in those dreams not to play Monk on the old bass but to say to him, You didn’t have me because I couldn’t find my way home, because I was so overcome by the very same confusion and helplessness and despair, the same cacophony and clatter and calamity, that have been visited upon you that I stumbled into an endless desert or swam into the widest sea or sharpened the sharpest blade or—or what? That he had been so addled, so undone, so unmoored that he simply couldn’t find his way back home? Wouldn’t he have at least wanted to come home?

  Someone was knocking on the door to Henry’s room. He assumed it was Latangi, there to deliver more towels or confirm a time for dinner. He crossed through from the adjoining room and opened the door.

  It was not Latangi; it was Amy.

  Twelve

  “HELLO,” AMY said, shyly, quietly, and she stepped forward and put her arms around Henry’s back and then said into his chest, so quietly that he could barely hear her, “I didn’t think you were alive. I really didn’t.” Then she stepped away, wiped the backs of her hands across her eyes the way he’d seen her do a hundred times, a gesture that declared that she would not cry.

  “Well, I am,” Henry said, palms out as if he were offering an apology, and he realized he was doing precisely what he’d imagined his father doing a thousand times—standing in a doorway and saying these words, knowing that they were not enough but that they were the only words with which to begin. Well, I’m alive.

  Henry saw her look around the room at all the things stacked there. He figured she must think that he was doing it again, piling up junk everywhere around him. He didn’t want her to think that he was still crazy.

  “People gave me all of this,” he said. “They felt—”

  “Mary called me,” Amy said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “You didn’t call me.”

  “I know,” Henry said. “I didn’t know—I didn’t—”

  “It doesn’t matter, Henry,” she said. “I’m glad you got out. That’s all. I’m relieved. So many people—”

  “Yes,” Henry said. “Please,” he said, “come in.” And he stepped to the side, steered her past the boxes of stuff and into the adjoining room, where at least there was a chair she could sit in, near the television.

  Amy shook her head at the TV screen, looked away.

  “I know,” he said. For a minute, they watched the images roll by, pictures of the ruin along the Gulf Coast, the shredded houses, the snapped trees. He turned the TV off and sat on the bed.

  “I was going to call you,” Henry said.

  “Okay,” Amy said.

  “I saw you,” he said. “That man. The red hair.” He hadn’t thought he would say this, but now he had. Amy looked at him. She’d cut her hair, arranged it in a different way. She was wearing blue jeans, a light blue shirt. She looked the same. Beautiful.

  He didn’t know what he wanted to say now. No, he knew what he wanted to say, everything he wanted to say. But how could he say it? “I saw him with you,” he said instead. “At your house. The house where you’re living.”

  “You came by the house?” Amy said.

  “I didn’t come by, exactly. I found it. By accident, sort of.”

  “Oh, Henry,” Amy said. How did she say it? Disgusted? Despairing? Distraught?

  “Please,” he said. “Please listen.”

  Henry understood that he had this one chance, that maybe he wouldn’t have another. He needed to tell her, to make her believe, that he understood the harm he’d done, that he had walked out, done exactly what his father had done, and hadn’t even realized that he was doing it. He needed to say that he was sorry, say it a thousand times. He needed to ask for forgiveness, ask for time to finish making himself whole. He needed to say that he had missed her and wanted her back and would do whatever it took, wait however long he must wait, to get her back. He needed to say that he was better, getting better, that he would not ever walk away again, could not even imagine it, would never again imagine it, world without end.

  He thought of Mohit’s poem, of the young bride placing her feet atop those of her husband, the gesture so particular, so tender, her arms crossed before her as though she were cradling their child.

  Oh, there should have been a child.

  “There’s this book, Amy,” he said. “I’ve found this book. You won’t believe it. It’s unbelievable, really. It’s a poem, an amazing poem. A manuscript. In a drawer. You won’t believe it.”

  She looked at him. He’d seen that expression before. Confusion? Fear? Anguish? Disgust? Which one was it?

  “No, no,” he said. “I’ll tell you later about that.” He reached forward to take her hand, but she didn’t reach for him. He let his hand drop. “What I want to say is that I’m here. I’m not sure how I got here but somehow I know it was to find you, to see you. I want you to know—” But he stopped because now Amy had turned away. He followed her eyes and saw that standing there in the doorway between the two rooms was Katrell Sparrow.

  “Mr. Garrett,” he said.

  “Yes?” Henry said.

  “My grandma sent me. She wants to ask if you could help with some money now.” He looked over at Amy and then back to Henry. “What you gave us before’s gone and she says we need more.”

  “I don’t—” Henry began. He turned to Amy, then back to the boy. “Wait,” he said.

  He looked at Amy. “Can we please talk later? I mean—” What should he do here? “Amy, this is Katrell Sparrow,” he said, and the boy stepped forward and shook Amy’s hand. “Amy, it was Katrell’s grandfather who passed away, who died in the accident.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Amy said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the boy answered, and he looked at Henry.

  What could he do? What could he give the boy and his family? Then he realized that he could at least give them this, give them everything in these rooms. What did he need of what had been given to him? Nothing.

  “You think you could help me load some things onto a truck?” Henry said to Katrell. The boy nodded. “I don’t have money right now, but I’ve got this. I’ve got these
things. Maybe some of this your grandmother might put to good use.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, looking around.

  Henry turned to Amy. “I’m sorry. Can we—”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Amy said. “I’ll help too.”

  So, together, they loaded as much as would fit into the bed of the blue truck—the rocking chair and lawn furniture, the cartons of food, the boxes of soda, the clothes—and Henry motioned for the boy to climb up front in the cab. Once he did, Henry went over to Amy. She was trying to cool down, standing in the doorway to his room and fanning her face with some paper. It was one of the Lucky Caverns brochures.

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I know we need to talk. I want to talk, it’s just—”

  “It’s fine,” Amy said. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “No, no,” Henry said. “I mean, I’m sorry for everything. I want to talk about everything.”

  “Listen, Henry,” Amy said, and she put her hand on his arm. “It’s been a year. That’s a long time.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know. I was in a dark place. I know that.”

  Amy sighed. “Listen. We can talk. We can have coffee or something and talk. That’s fine. But I’m not prepared to go down into that dark place with you. You understand? I’m not going to do that.” Henry waited for her to say it, to say how much he had hurt her, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned to look over at the truck. “It’s nice what you’re doing, Henry. It’s good of you.”

  “Well—”

  “Well, it is,” Amy said, and she stepped forward, kissed his cheek, and turned to go. Then she looked back and said, “You wanted to give me something? A book? A manuscript?”

  “Later,” Henry said. “I’ll give it to you later. Can I give it to you later?”

  Amy looked at him. “I guess you know where I live,” she said.

  “Yes,” Henry said.

  “Okay, then.”

  And Henry watched as she got into her car and drove away.

  The boy with the limp arm was Katrell’s cousin, and his name was Stacey. He was eager to help unload the truck, cradling each soda bottle or cereal box or underwear pack against his chest as if it were a precious artifact unearthed during an archaeological dig. “He belongs to my aunt Celee,” Katrell told Henry. “She had some trouble when he was born.”

  Mrs. Hughes stayed in the trailer in her wheelchair as Henry and Katrell carried everything inside. Looking at the things they’d brought stacked against the wall, Henry wondered what use they’d make of much of it, but Mrs. Hughes seemed pleased, nodding each time Henry set something down. “That’s mighty kind,” she said again and again.

  When they were done, Henry walked over to the old woman. With her seated in the wheelchair, he felt as if he were looming over her, so he knelt. “Mrs. Hughes, I want you to understand that I’m going to have to earn that money I promised you.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, and Henry detected again the remarkable quality of the woman’s features, as if her splotched, ravaged skin might simply peel away to reveal her true face. He thought of Mohit’s poem, of the spells and curses that turned the young into the old, of the incantations and blessings that restored all that had been lost.

  This woman had just lost her husband, but she’d lost a daughter, Katrell’s mother, years before that. And how many others? How much else? What did he know, in the end, about such things? He’d lost a child. They, he and Amy, had lost a child. It—he? she?—had not even been born, had not ever lived. Even so.

  “Mr. Hughes?” Henry said. “Your husband?”

  The old woman nodded, as if she understood what Henry was asking: Who was this man with whom you spent all these years?

  “A snake in the grass,” she said. “Just a snake in the grass.” But Henry saw that she was smiling, that her words, no matter how they sounded, were a testament of love.

  “It might take a while, Mrs. Hughes,” Henry said, “but I’ll pay you what you’re owed.”

  “I understand,” the woman said, and Henry watched as she nodded and closed her eyes, not from weariness, it seemed, but as if she were watching something inside her, something Henry couldn’t possibly see.

  “I’ll go, then,” he said, and she nodded again, her eyes still closed.

  Once he’d gotten into the car and prepared to pull away, the young boy with the limp arm, Stacey, appeared again in the doorway and, with his other arm, waved good-bye.

  The prince—Henry believed he was a prince, though he seemed to be a god as well—was asleep in the forest beside a stream. Keeping watch over him was a lion, which was then joined by other creatures: a wolf, a bull, a deer, a lamb, a mouse. Birds—doves, swallows, hawks—began to swirl in the sky overhead; fish leaped again and again from the stream. One by one these animals pledged to forsake the actions of their past lives. The wolf would no longer pursue the lamb, nor the lion the wolf, nor the hawk the mouse. And one by one they realized that they would abide by these pledges not because they had evaded death but because they had not, that they had indeed already died but had now traveled beyond the realm in which death held dominion. They were in paradise, where death was forbidden to enter.

  After his dinner with Latangi, Henry had returned to the room at the opposite end of the motel from his own to page again through The Creator’s Mistress. He did not yet want to remove the manuscript from Mohit’s study, vaguely fearing—as if he had himself been implanted in the magical world of the poem—that something terrible might happen to it should he do so: it might burst into flames or crumble into dust, or a sudden wind might whip the pages from his hands and scatter them across the earth. He imagined spending a lifetime hunting down each delicate page, imagined Amy joining him on such an impossible but noble quest.

  At dinner he had told Latangi what he thought of Mohit’s work—of the beauty and grace of the language, of the vast and magical world in which he had felt himself immersed, of the great power the poem seemed to possess, of how he had felt himself transformed even as he read. In the rush of his words he heard the echo of all those radio evangelists proclaiming what had always seemed to him absurd and theatrical and unconvincing—that lives of despair and defeat, of bitterness and regret, of toil and trial and tribulation could, in a single moment, be redeemed.

  He told Latangi everything he’d done—leaving Amy, quitting his job, squandering every gift he had ever been granted, every fortune he had ever possessed—and he told her that he’d done it for no good reason, simply because of the chaos that had swirled inside his head, the noise and ruinous desire, the clamor and clatter, the cacophony. He did not have the words for it, had never had the words.

  Now he did not need them, he said. He did not know, he told her, how Mohit’s poem had quieted that torment, and he did not know for sure that one day it would not simply return. But he felt himself healed, felt himself able to be healed, and now what remained was to fix as much of what he had broken as he could fix.

  “Your marriage, Mr. Henry?” Latangi asked, weeping for him that moment just as she had wept as he spoke of Mohit’s poem, and Henry said that he did not know, just as he did not know when or if he would be able to return to New Orleans or if there would be a life for him there.

  “So very much not knowing, Mr. Henry,” Latangi said, wiping her eyes with a pale blue handkerchief.

  Henry smiled and said, “Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s better.”

  “Yes, Mr. Henry,” Latangi said, nodding. “Mohit would say, whenever we were unsure of what to do, ‘We have reached a place too dark to see, so we shall go together.’”

  And Henry had been certain then that, with those words, Latangi was making a pledge. She would, when he asked, agree to hire him so he could pay Mrs. Hughes the money he’d promised. She would allow him to continue to live at the Spotlight as long as he needed a place to stay. She would help him find his way.

  When he left that night, she’d stood and hugged him, and Henry knew that L
atangi had not actually spoken, that he had simply imagined it—invented it—but he heard her say, My son, my son, my son.

  Now he lay down on the cot in Mohit’s room and slept, certain as to what the morning would bring: this new life.

  Thirteen

  HE DID not see Amy for the next two weeks. He hadn’t gone back to her house; he couldn’t make himself do it, certain that she’d come out and say, unequivocally, what she had not had the chance to say when she’d shown up at the motel—that too much time had passed, that he had walked out on her and on their marriage, and that now, a year later, she was done; they were done. But he did not want to be done, had never wanted to be done. He had been ill, that was all. He had been ill and now he was cured, he wanted to tell her.

  He was not cured, of course. He knew he was not. He was better; he was better. But the melancholy and despair, the clatter and chaos, swept over him now and again, particularly when he spent too much time watching the television, keeping track of what was happening in New Orleans—the city emptying out bit by bit until virtually nothing and no one remained except the giant piles of debris and the uprooted trees and dangling wires, the muddy, oil-and-shit-smeared streets and the gun-toting soldiers spread out across the Quarter and the Garden District in search of disoriented stragglers, of looters, of the forgotten. In search of the dead. Worst of all were these grim discoveries, dozens who had been left behind in hospitals and nursing homes and halfway houses, young mothers who had drowned cradling their newborn babies in their arms, the sick or elderly or disabled who’d died in their beds. It was not clear if their caretakers had abandoned them or if they had died as well.