A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

by John Gregory Brown

  Katrell stepped forward, around his grandmother’s wheelchair. He looked at Marge and then at Henry. “I’d like to go,” he said. “I’d like to go if I could.”

  “He might be of some service to you,” Mrs. Hughes said. “He’s got a suspension.”

  There had been a fig tree in that churchyard, he and Mary playing beneath it while their father was in the church. There was singing inside. He let the singing come to him, tried to remember the hymn being sung. “Ride on, King Jesus.” And there had been a fig tree in Mohit’s poem, a great tree offering shade to the lovers in a garden of siuli-flowers, jasmines, jamrul.

  “Mr. Garrett?” Marge was saying. “Mr. Garrett?”

  Henry closed his eyes, opened them again. He looked at Katrell Sparrow, the boy’s lanky limbs, his long neck. Not a sparrow, not a hawk—what? An egret, maybe, or a flamingo. Couldn’t they use a companion on this journey? Though he was a child, wouldn’t he soon, in the blink of an eye, be a man? Henry thought of the story Rusty Campbell had told him about Marion Hughes, about him losing his father in the fire on the train. Didn’t he have something he might offer this boy?

  “If you can spare him, Mrs. Hughes,” he said. “If you can spare him, we’d be honored to take him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mrs. Hughes said, nodding, taking hold of the boy’s arm. “He’s been good to me, a solace. The Lord’s blessing.”

  “He’d be a blessing to us as well,” Henry said, and he felt himself possessed by this language of belief, comforted by its certainty, its beseeching. Make a way out of no way. Sit at His feet and be blessed. Expect to be landed upon the shore.

  “He’ll be fine,” Henry said to Marge.

  “You’ll care for him,” Mrs. Hughes said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Henry said again, his voice like a ringing bell sounding out across a wide clear lake. He felt the chill of his fear that he and Marge—and now this boy—would fail.

  “He’s never been nowhere,” Mrs. Hughes said. “He needs to see what’s out there.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Henry said again, and he turned to Marge, nodded.

  Finally, Marge smiled. “All aboard, then, I guess. This train’s about to leave the station.”

  For the first time, Henry saw the boy smile, saw him proudly pull his shoulders back as if he were a soldier who’d been called to attention.

  Marge turned to Katrell. “You have a sleeping bag?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, okay, we’ll manage,” she said. “Grab a few changes of clothes. We’ll take care of the rest. We’ll be gone a few days, a week at most, if—well, I don’t know.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, and he emptied out the two Food Lion bags, walked over to a plastic basket in the corner of the room, pulled clothes from it, and then stuffed them into the grocery bags.

  “That’s all you need?” Marge said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The boy walked over to his grandmother. “Call Aunt Celee, Mamaw,” he said. “Call Aunt Celee to come on over with Stacey. They can stay with you.”

  His grandmother nodded. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. She waved him away. “Go on,” she said. “Behave yourself.”

  Outside, Marge pointed to her car. “You ever had a ride in a convertible?” she asked him.

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  “Well, hold on to your hat,” Marge said. “You’re about to.”

  Henry watched Katrell settle into the backseat, the two plastic bags of clothes perched on his lap. What could he possibly be thinking? He was headed out into the world with two complete strangers, and he didn’t seem the least bit worried or afraid. And Henry realized he was the one who felt comforted—by the boy’s anticipation, by his faith.

  Here they were then, the three of them, the car’s top down, the wind in their faces. It was too loud for conversation. He thought about Amy. She’d come to see him again at the Spotlight to return Mohit’s manuscript, to tell him that she had read the poem. “Beginning to end,” she’d said. “It’s beautiful.”

  Yes. Henry had nodded. Yes, yes, elated that he had not been wrong, that she had seen and felt its power.

  “You were right,” Amy said. “It’s really truly something.”

  Henry led her down to Mohit’s study. He wanted her to see the space, see and feel how it was like a monk’s spartan cell: bare walls, a cot, a lamp, a desk. He carefully placed the manuscript back in the drawer just as Amy began to speak.

  “I’ve got a theory,” she said.

  Henry looked at her. He could tell, just by those few words, by her tone, that she’d rehearsed what she wanted to say.

  “I was thinking a lot about you as I was reading,” she said. “I think, well, because of your history, because of how you grew up—and maybe it’s not just that. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s just who you are. But I think it’s hard for you to navigate your own experience, your own way through things. And something like this—books, stories—they’re the way you’ve always done it. Does that make sense?”

  Henry looked at her, waiting, expecting more. This would be it, he figured; this would be how she told him that he’d lost her for good.

  “That’s all, really,” Amy said. “I think you’re forever relying on something else to explain how you’re feeling, the way you see things. You’ve always had trouble saying it for yourself.”

  She was right, of course. He’d loved to teach, to talk about literature with his students, because it had given him a way to say all the things he otherwise couldn’t figure out how to say—about longing and loneliness, about sorrow. It was not, though, just that they gave him a way to talk about these things. It was more than that. It was as if he couldn’t even really see anything, couldn’t see himself, without these stories. They’d given him the only sense he had of who he was.

  He looked at Amy; how beautiful she was here before him. He thought about all those times they’d slept together and his silence, his inability to announce his own desire. An emptiness opened in him, too vast, too painful.

  “This poem,” Amy said, “it’s a love story, Henry, I see that. I get it. I know that’s why you wanted me to read it. You wanted to say to me that you still loved me. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s not it—”

  “No,” Henry said. “That’s it.” He looked away.

  “Okay, then,” Amy said. “Look at me.”

  He turned to her, lifted his head.

  “I hear you,” she said. “I’m not ready to say that back, you understand? I’m not saying I won’t ever be, but I’m not right now. Whatever reason you had, whatever history or illness made you do it, you left me. And I had to put another life together, or try to. I’ve lost a lot too. You, my husband. My parents. That’s not the same, I know, as losing them when you’re a kid. But it’s still something.”

  Here I am now, he wanted to say but couldn’t. It was still too difficult to speak. He was still too empty, too lost.

  “And home. The house. The whole city. That too.”

  “Do you think—” Henry said. “Do you think you could go back?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t think about that yet.”

  “I’m trying to go back,” Henry said. He knew he shouldn’t start talking again about Tomas Otxoa, about seeing him in the cracked window, trying to find him; he knew what she’d think, how irrational it would seem. But he needed to tell her something. “I want to see it. I want to be there. I feel like I need to.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “I’m going to go soon. There’s someone at the town hall trying to help me. A secretary. Marge Brockman. You know her, or she knows you. She ran into you at the grocery, I think. Anyway, she went when you were signing books. She’s going too.”

  “Can you just go down there? I didn’t think you could.”

  “I’m going to find out,” Henry said.

  Amy nodded.

  “But I’ll come back here,” he said.
“The motel’s going to be sold, but I’ll figure out something.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I know you’re seeing this guy,” Henry said. “I know that maybe that’s something. So I understand I’ve got to wait.”

  “Yes,” Amy said. “You’ve got to wait.”

  “Then I’ll wait,” he said. “I’m not sure how I tell you that, how I show you that I’m waiting.”

  Henry thought about what Mary had told him, how she knew Amy wasn’t in love with Hunter McClellan.

  “You could remind me, maybe,” Amy said. “You could figure out, maybe, a way to remind me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Henry said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  So here they were, the highway rolling away beneath them. A month ago, he’d wandered for three days before he’d wound up in Virginia. But now, with just one day of driving, they were already through Virginia and almost through Tennessee, night settling in as they approached Memphis.

  After they’d stopped for dinner and put gas in the car, Marge asked Henry to drive, and she climbed into the backseat with Katrell. As he drove, Henry could hear her talking, asking the boy about his life. Again and again Henry looked in the rearview mirror. All he could see in the dark car was the outline of their two faces, with flashes of light every now and again from other cars. He’d see their eyes, then their profiles, rectangles of light scanning across them.

  He kept his head cocked to try to hear Katrell’s answers. He’d been only three, he said, when his mother died. He’d met his father once or twice—the name Sparrow was from him. For a long time his father had been incarcerated near Norfolk. He thought that was where he still was. He’d never had a bedroom of his own but had slept on the sofa in his grandparents’ trailer, which was fine except when they had family over and everyone stayed up late laughing and playing cards and fussing. He was decent at basketball because he was tall but he liked football better, liked the contact, the hitting and getting hit.

  “I know just what you mean,” Henry heard Marge tell him. “My Charlie likes NASCAR, but I’d rather watch football any day. You like the Redskins?”

  “No, ma’am,” Katrell answered. “I like the Cowboys.”

  “Then we can’t be friends, I guess,” Marge said, and Henry heard both of them laughing.

  There were fewer and fewer cars on the road. He heard Marge ask Katrell about being suspended from school, about what had happened, but he couldn’t really hear Katrell’s answer—something about a girl and a fight, it seemed, his tone of voice more resignation than anger.

  What had Mrs. Hughes wanted, really, in asking them to take her grandson with them? Clearly he was the one who took care of her, but maybe she just wanted him to see that the world was a bigger place than that run-down trailer. Maybe she wanted to plant in him the idea that there was somewhere else he might go. But this trip? To New Orleans? Maybe she just believed in charity, in doing right by someone else, and she wanted Katrell to offer whatever help he could. Henry didn’t know.

  It was nearly midnight when he started looking for a place to stop; they were at least five or six hours from New Orleans. He had some money because Latangi had cashed another check for him even though his bank in New Orleans hadn’t yet reopened. Their main office on Carondelet had taken in water, a recorded message announced when Henry first called. Later, that message was replaced by another apologizing for circumstances beyond our control, then another that referred him to a different number, a different bank, but by that point Henry had given up.

  He’d driven through Memphis and then down I-55 into Mississippi. Jackson was a couple of hours ahead. Marge and Katrell had both fallen asleep. It was late—the clock on the dashboard said it was 1:35 a.m. Should he stop or just keep going? With each motel he passed, he thought about Latangi. She’d told him that she’d still be there when he got back but that she’d be leaving soon.

  “How long is soon?” Henry had asked, and she’d looked away from him.

  “Soon is soon, Mr. Henry,” she’d said. “In Bengali, soon is shiggiri.”

  “Shiggiri,” Henry said.

  Latangi nodded, smiled. “Shiggiri,” she said again, correcting some error he’d made in pronouncing it that he couldn’t detect.

  “And this?” Henry had asked, indicating the motel. “What will happen to this?”

  “It will be sold, Mr. Henry, if a buyer is located.” She raised a finger in the air. “With one provision, though, Mr. Henry. If you would like to stay, you must be allowed to stay. Was this not my promise upon your arrival?”

  “Yes,” Henry said.

  “Well, then,” Latangi said. “This elephant is faithful one hundred percent.”

  Henry looked at Latangi. She laughed. “Dr. Seuss?” she said. “Horton Hatches the Egg?”

  “Yes,” Henry said.

  “This is one of the books that taught me English.”

  “Me too, I’m sure.” Henry laughed. “And if you can’t sell the motel?” Henry said. “What then?”

  “I am optimist,” Latangi said.

  “I’m afraid I’m not,” Henry said.

  “I don’t agree, Mr. Henry. No. Pessimist does not go home to”—she waved her hand—“to such a place to save someone. That is not pessimist.”

  “No,” Henry said. “It’s crazy.”

  “Crazy, yes,” Latangi said. “My Mohit was a poet. Do you think I do not know crazy? And I believe you are more like Mohit than you acknowledge.”

  “Thank you,” Henry said.

  “Bhalo thakben,” Latangi said. “It means ‘good-bye,’ Mr. Henry. It means ‘keep well.’”

  “Keep well,” Henry said.

  Latangi wiped tears from her eyes and smiled. “You will keep well, Mr. Henry. I am certain. One hundred percent.”

  He was not well, of course, but he was better. He drove through the darkness, Katrell Sparrow and Marge asleep behind him, and he listened to the clatter in his head, the shouts and whispers: his mother, Amy, Father Ferguson, Mary. And strangers: Vietnamese children’s voices, their singing sharp and metallic; black children’s voices, spilling through an open church door, clear and joyous; the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers performing “Antioch,” a recording his father had played again and again, the men’s and women’s voices stacked one upon the other like heavy bricks. He felt as though he were watching from the bank as men and women in white robes stood knee-deep in a stream, prepared to be baptized. Expect to be landed upon the shore, a preacher shouted, and music swirled through it all, koras and slide guitars, trumpets and drums. Henry did not know why he was no longer frightened, but he wasn’t. You will keep well, Latangi had told him, and perhaps he believed her after all.

  He realized that what he would miss most of all, after Latangi herself, was Mohit’s study—the bare white walls, the desk, the cot in the corner with its simple blanket. All of that, yes, but not so much that as the spirit Henry had come to believe the room possessed, the hold that it could claim on him simply by his stepping into it, taking a seat at the desk, lying on the cot.

  Three more hours until they reached New Orleans. Too many to finish the drive tonight. And what would they face when they arrived? Henry had no idea. A roadblock? A police interrogation? A sign demanding that they turn around? He thought about The Wizard of Oz, the door to the Emerald City slammed shut, a gruff voice behind it barking that the wizard would not see them, that they might as well go home.

  He was too exhausted to be driving, too unsteady. The clatter had grown louder and louder. At the next motel he spotted, a Travelodge, he veered into the parking lot. Marge and Katrell stirred when the car stopped.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said quietly, but Marge sat up quickly, as if he’d shouted.

  “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll get the rooms.” And she nodded and fell back again against her seat, closed her eyes.

  “Dear Lord,” Henry heard her say just before he closed the car door, “the dream I was having.”

&nbs
p; Inside, Henry tapped the bell on the desk. When no one appeared, he tapped it again. The clock on the wall read 2:15. Love not the world, Henry heard in his head, neither the things that are in the world. Finally, a woman appeared. She looked Indian too, though much younger than Latangi, and she was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, black hair pulled back, knotted in a ponytail. Ole Miss, the T-shirt said in blue and red letters.

  “Two rooms?” Henry asked. “Do you have two rooms?”

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said, nodding. She began typing on the computer keyboard. “License and credit card, please.”

  “I’ll pay you cash,” Henry said.

  The woman stopped typing. She looked at him, suspicious.

  “I’m from New Orleans,” Henry said. “I’m going back there.”

  “Okay,” the woman said and resumed typing. “Cash.”

  “Are you from India?” Henry asked.

  The woman stopped typing again and stared at Henry. “No,” she said, impatient. “I’m American. A citizen.”

  “So sorry,” Henry said. “I just asked because, well, I have a friend in Virginia. She has a motel. She’s Indian.”

  “Pakistan,” the woman said, her tone softer now. “My parents came here from Pakistan.”

  “I see,” Henry said. “For this?” He tapped on the counter to indicate that he meant the motel. “Why this?”

  “That’s exactly what I asked them. ‘This is what we do,’ my father said. ‘This is the opportunity we are given. Motels. Convenience stores.’ He said Americans didn’t want them.”

  “Too much work, I guess,” Henry said. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen,” the woman said. “From Islamabad. To Mississippi,” she said. “To Goodman, Mississippi.”

  “That’s where we are?” Henry said.

  “That’s where we are,” the young woman answered, shaking her head, the life she knew—however difficult it had been—suddenly pulled from under her feet. “Want to guess how many Pakistanis there are in all of Mississippi?” She placed two room keys on the counter, the key chains gold plastic triangles with numbers printed on them.