Henry had gotten to know Maurice Rose and liked him. He was tough on Katrell, demanding he be there on time, insisting he keep his grades up if he wanted to continue working at the bakery, expecting him to show up at church Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. Whenever Henry slipped away from the motel for breakfast or lunch at What a Blessing, Maurice Rose stepped from behind the counter, wiped his hands on his long apron, and shook Henry’s hand. They talked about jazz and about the band that Maurice Rose had assembled, a few old guys from the Rivermont Senior Center, some who’d played in bands years ago, not jazz but blues and funk and Texas swing.
A week later Henry brought in his father’s bass and offered it to Maurice Rose. “I’ve kept this for years and years,” Henry told him. “It’s about time somebody played it.”
Maurice Rose admired the instrument, running his hand over the wide body, then he pulled it toward him. He plucked each of the four strings, played up and back down one scale—B-flat, Henry saw—and then another. “That’s a mighty nice one,” he said, nodding. “I couldn’t take it.”
“I’d like you to, though,” Henry said.
Maurice Rose shook his head.
“What if Katrell Sparrow was interested in learning?” Henry said. “Would you take it then?”
“Well, I guess I’d hold on to it if he wanted to learn.”
“I think he will,” Henry said.
And Katrell had indeed agreed to the lessons, to coming back twice a week after school. He confessed to Henry it gave him a reason to quit football, which was proving to be a lot harder than he’d expected. “I’m just too skinny,” he said. “One hit by those big dudes and I go flying.”
Katrell had been living with his aunt Celee and his cousin Stacey the last six months, ever since his grandmother had passed away from kidney complications related to her diabetes. Henry had attended the funeral along with Marge, and they’d both been shocked to learn that Mrs. Hughes had been only fifty-seven. She’d looked thirty years older.
During his eulogy the minister mentioned Marion’s death, the sudden tragedy of it and the pain that it had caused her, and Henry expected the gathering to turn to look at him sitting in the back row with Marge, but not a single person did. Instead they listened as the minister announced, “Here is a song of rising up, a song of degrees,” and they all solemnly intoned Amen.
“The One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Psalm,” the minister went on, his Bible open in one hand, the other raised above his head. “Except the Lord build this house,” he read, “they labor in vain to build it.” Henry remembered seeing the first half of this verse on a sign outside of one of the churches along the highway. Maybe it had been this one.
The congregation responded: Amen.
“Except the Lord keep the city,” the minister continued, “the watchman waketh but in vain.” Amen.
“It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so He giveth his beloved sleep.” Amen.
“Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward.” Here he looked down at Katrell seated in the front row. Amen.
“Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed.” He closed the Bible and raised both of his arms above his head. “They shall not be ashamed,” he repeated, “but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”
Amen.
As usual, Henry couldn’t follow the actual meaning of these verses, and he wondered if those around him could—or perhaps they’d heard them so many times they’d become a kind of comforting music, somber and beautiful.
Surely, Henry said to himself, hearing the minister’s resonant baritone, I have eaten the bread of sorrows.
Yes indeed. He’d eaten his fill of the bread of sorrows. So many had.
A wire basket was passed around to collect the funds needed to pay what the minister called “Sister Hughes’s final obligations.” Then the service was over, and Henry and Marge stood as, row by row, the gathered mourners filed out behind the casket. Many shook his hand as they walked past, nearly half of them wearing gold ribbons on their dresses or jackets to signify that they were family.
When they arrived back at the motel, Henry thanked Marge for going with him to the funeral. “Not just that, of course,” he said. “Thank you for everything.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Marge said, switching off her car. “You don’t know this because it all happened before you landed here, but I needed this. Charlie could tell you. Rusty Campbell could tell you too. I needed to do some good. I needed someone to help. I’d had the life kicked out of me in about a hundred different ways. Not just the cancer scare. That was just one part. There’s so many others it’d take two weeks and a gallon of box wine to get through.”
“I’d be happy to listen,” Henry said. “All you’ve done for me.”
“It’s been something, hasn’t it?” Marge said.
“Yes, it has,” Henry said, and they sat there a moment in silence, both of them shaking their heads.
What Marge had managed, Henry knew, must have been an incredible performance, and he wished he’d been present to view it. The last he’d seen when he staggered away from the highway was Marge waving something out the car window. He learned later that it was a letter with Judge Martin’s signature on it, a letter stamped and embossed with the official seal of Judge Martin’s office. It stated that Marge was a sheriff’s sworn deputy with the Commonwealth of Virginia’s solemn and express permission to enter the city of New Orleans to locate a family member of one Henry Archer Garrett. Of course, Marge had made it all up, had forged Judge Martin’s signature.
The police officer had been more than a little skeptical, even when Marge pulled out a badge, which she’d taken from Judge Martin’s desk drawer.
“You know good and well Virginia law don’t mean a goddamn thing here,” the officer said.
“You got any local judges handy?” Marge said, smiling. “Or have they all run off?”
“Run off,” the officer said.
“Not you,” Marge said. “Not me either. We just keep doing our jobs. If I could tell you the half of it.” And Marge turned then to look back at Katrell, as if he were part of the great mystery.
“Who the hell is this Henry Garrett guy anyway?” the officer said.
“If I told you that,” Marge said, “I’d have to kill you. Or at least kiss you.”
Now the officer smiled at Marge, shook his head, and laughed. “He’s not dangerous?” he asked.
“No, no, no. Not by a long shot,” Marge told him. “He’s not drunk either, by the way. That was all an act.”
“A goddamn stupid one,” the officer said. “I could have shot him.”
“He must have known you wouldn’t,” Marge said.
“Well, I didn’t know it,” the officer said. “You know where he’s going, where you’re trying to get?”
“I don’t, not exactly,” Marge said. “A store on Magazine Street.”
“Then you’re going to need someone to get you uptown. There’s too many streets still blocked. You wouldn’t make it. Let me see what I can do.”
Marge said that when the officer went over to his car to make a call on his radio, she turned to Katrell, smiled, and said, “I’m freely confessing right here and now to all the lies I’ve been telling. You believe the Lord will forgive me on account of the good I’m trying to do?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Katrell answered.
“I do too,” Marge said.
The officer came back. “It may take a while for someone to get over here,” he said. “Probably an hour or two. You mind waiting?”
“Not at all,” Marge said she told him. “How much trouble can that man get himself into?”
“You’d be surprised,” the officer said.
“No, you would,” she told him, shaking her head. “You would.”
Two weeks before Mrs. Hughes’s death, Latangi had married Iri Chakravarty, Mohit’s b
rother. They’d held the ceremony in Virginia rather than in India. Latangi had wanted to return to Calcutta as Iri’s wife, she told Henry, not his betrothed. “I am an old woman, not a young virgin,” she said. It had taken Mohit’s brother a while to set work aside at the hospital in Calcutta and fly to America, and Latangi had used the time to teach Henry everything he needed to know to run the motel. She’d hired Rusty Campbell to find a buyer, but he’d confessed to Henry that she’d told him to ask for a price so high no one would ever pay it.
“She wants you to have it, you know,” Rusty Campbell told him. “She says the man she’s marrying has more money than they’ll ever need. I tried to tell her it’s the land that’s valuable and not the motel, that Exxon or BP might want the lot for a station, but she said she didn’t want the place torn down. I told her you can’t stipulate such a thing in a sale, but she says, ‘I believe I can do whatever I want if I do not actually accept an offer, yes?’ And I laughed and told her, ‘Well, you’ve got me there with that one.’”
Latangi had asked Henry if he’d serve as a witness at the wedding. She’d asked Amy as well. It was clear to both of them what Latangi was up to, getting them back together for such an occasion. Latangi had asked Henry if he’d read something from Mohit’s poem, and Henry had spent hours and hours hunting for the right passage.
I have searched and searched for my beloved, he recited in Latangi’s apartment, which had been strung with bright flags and twinkling lights and filled with the scent of the spectacular meal Amy had brought with her, Bengali dishes Latangi had taught her to prepare—enough recipes for Amy to begin another book, Latangi had suggested to Henry, one that could prompt them to pay a visit to Calcutta together.
Henry had looked at Latangi, pretending scorn.
“I am a devil, yes,” she’d said, smiling, lightly slapping his arm.
I have searched and searched for my beloved, Henry recited at the wedding, in the syama vines and the eyes of the gazelle, in the flowers of the kurinci and the skylark’s breath, only to see now, as the dawn’s mist clears, you are already here beside me, hand to my hand, breast to my breast, hearts not two drums but a call and echo, call and echo, two silkworms weaving a sturdy house from fragile thread.
And when Henry looked at Amy, he saw that she was weeping—smiling and weeping, nodding at him, hands raised to her chest—offering another small moment of hope that in time he might be fully forgiven. He would remain here in Virginia, he’d decided. He would remain as long as Amy remained, until he knew for certain if she would choose him again. Meanwhile, he would keep well. He would do everything he could to keep well.
The insurance money from the damage at Endly’s hadn’t been nearly enough to buy the motel, but it had allowed Henry to make some desperately needed repairs and refurbishments and to erect a sign out by the highway, exactly what Mohit had wanted, the neon-blue outline of an elephant’s head with The Ganesha Motel in bright red above it. He took a picture and sent it via e-mail to Latangi.
Ōyāṅḋṅāraphula! May Ganeshvara guide you in your every endeavor! Latangi responded. Do not forget that although he is portly, mischievous, and merry, he is also Lord of Obstacles, Remover of Impediments. I eagerly await word of your every success. And then as a postscript she’d added, I am contented but miss you, Mr. Henry. My blessings.
And so far things had gone well. The motel had begun to get more and more business, and Henry had been able to hire two women to clean the rooms and another to take care of the front desk in the evening. He’d cleared out the items that remained of Mohit’s import business, donating most of it to the junk store in Marimore, which was more than happy to have it.
He’d left Mohit’s study exactly as it was, and though now and again he’d go out to dinner with Amy, most evenings he spent there in that room. He had a project that he’d spoken to no one about, not even Amy. He was afraid of what she’d think, afraid it would be the thing to convince her he’d not fully straightened out his head.
But he wasn’t crazy; he wasn’t. It might take him forever to accomplish what he had set out to do, but look at what Mohit had done all those years, what Mohit and Latangi had done together. Look at what they’d made, what they’d brought into being.
Every time he sat down now at Mohit’s desk he thought about what had happened, what he’d found in New Orleans, at Endly’s. At first, of course, he hadn’t seen it. He’d seen his father’s bass in the corner; he’d seen the bent dusty shelves. He’d called out for Tomas; he’d called and called until he understood, finally, that there wouldn’t be an answer.
But then he’d seen it. On a low shelf at the end of the aisle, left there as if it were nothing to notice, the cardboard box Tomas had been holding against his chest as he peered out through the cracked window.
Henry had walked over, sat down. He’d slid the box off the shelf, let it fall into his lap. It wasn’t empty, he could tell by the weight of it. He felt the chill of his sweat-soaked shirt against his chest. He pulled the top off the box, and inside were pages, hundreds of them, a manuscript, damp and discolored but not obliterated, the ink smudged but not washed away.
The words were inscrutable, nothing Henry had ever seen. Basque, of course. He could simply look at them and see that they must be Basque. He’d heard Tomas recite enough of the language to recognize it, the rat-a-tat-tat of consonants, the string of k’s and z’s and x’s unlike any other language known to man—a language, Tomas had told him again and again, as old as stone and steel, as earth and sea and sky.
So Henry did not know what exactly he had in his possession. A manuscript, yes, but what was it? He turned from one page to the next as if he might come across a word or two he recognized, but of course he didn’t. Only when he reached the final page did he see, scrawled in ink, a name and an address, the address in Bilbao, the city where Tomas had told Henry his brother’s novels were sent to be published. Was this the manuscript of one of his brother’s books, one Tomas had kept in his possession? Tomas had said that he did not know where his brother might be, that he had searched and searched but had never found him.
When Henry looked up from the manuscript, he saw Marge and Katrell outside, peering in through the front window. Next to them was a police officer. He imagined the officer taking out his gun. Did he imagine it or was that what the officer was doing? He tried to stand, realized he couldn’t. He slipped the top back over the box and held it against his chest. He closed his eyes and, as soon as he did, felt water rising over his legs, reaching his waist; he felt the water cover his shoulders and neck. He gasped for breath, felt himself sink below the surface.
Then someone took hold of his arm, touched his shoulder, his chin. He opened his eyes and saw Marge leaning over him, her hands below one arm, trying to help him up, trying to lift him.
From the water? There was no water.
“Mr. Garrett, Mr. Garrett,” he heard Marge saying, and he saw Katrell Sparrow, felt him take his other arm. “We’re going to stand up now,” Marge said. “Gentle, gentle.”
“What are you doing?” Henry said.
“We’ve got to get you up. We’ve got to go now,” Marge said. “You’ll be just fine. Don’t you worry. We’ve got you.”
“Where are we going?” Henry asked. “Where are we going?” He heard a siren; he looked down at his feet, looked for the water he was sure he’d felt rising beneath him. He heard his father’s voice and Mary’s. He heard the humming of bees.
“We’re going home,” Marge said. “Back to Virginia.”
Henry looked around, saw the officer through the window, saw his father’s bass leaning against the wall in the corner.
“That,” Henry said, pointing. “That needs to come with us.”
“What?” Marge said, and Henry pointed again.
“I don’t know,” Marge said. “I don’t know as it will fit.”
“It will,” Henry said. “It will. It will.”
“Okay,” he heard Marge say. “Okay. We�
�ll give it a try.”
She turned to Katrell, said to him, “You go fetch it. Haul it out there. We’ll put the top down. I’ll manage Mr. Garrett.”
She turned back to Henry, steered him forward as if he were a frail old man.
“Now we need to get going,” she told him, “or all three of us will wind up Lord knows where.”
“We’re there already,” Henry said. He hadn’t meant it as a joke—he wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying—but Marge had laughed. “I guess we are,” she said. “I guess that’s right where we are. Lord knows where.”
“The end,” Henry said, though what he’d meant to say was Endly’s. “The end is…” But he was too exhausted to go on, to make sense of whatever it was he was thinking. He managed to climb into the car, into the backseat next to his father’s bass, and Katrell sat up front with Marge. Before the officer had led them out of town, Henry was already asleep, the manuscript box in his lap, his arms folded across it.
Most nights now he sat in Mohit’s study with the manuscript before him, books scattered everywhere, covering the floor. He’d made a copy to mail to the address in Bilbao; he’d kept the original in Mohit’s desk drawer. He’d been afraid it might somehow get lost in the mail. Along with the manuscript he’d sent a letter explaining who he was, how he’d come to be in possession of these pages. He said he hoped to get news of Tomas if there was any word from him. They’d been friends, he said. He wanted to make sure Tomas had wound up okay wherever he went after the storm.
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere Page 25
