Black Horizon

by Robert Masello

  “Hey, lady, what the fuck do you think you're doing out there?”

  It was the black waiter, with the leopard-print turban. He was swinging one leg over the iron railing of the Torch Room, just as Jack had done.

  “I'm a doctor; that's my patient out there. I'm going to get him.”

  “No you ain't. I'm going to get him. You're going back into the club.”

  Nancy didn't feel like arguing with him. She had her balance now, and with her hands still resting slightly against the warm brick, she moved off down the catwalk.

  “Shit,” the waiter said, when he saw her inching away. He stood on the ledge of the Torch Room, wondering what to do, which lunatic to collect first.

  Phillip's face appeared in the crowd just behind him. His

  mouth was open, but he was speechless. Amy and Joey were leaning over the railing as though this was the best, and most unexpected, wedding entertainment they could ever have dreamed up. Never in her life had Nancy felt so exposed, so afraid, and curiously. . . so alive.

  The waiter jumped to the tracks below, missed his footing, and sprawled forward. “Goddamn/;!” He rolled over, holding his ankle. "Goddamnit. I'm gonna kill that sucker when I catch him.”

  Nancy tried to increase her speed. But as she got farther away from the Torch Room, the light grew dimmer, the air and walls colder. Jack was weaving back and forth across the tracks now, but not as if he was disoriented; it was more as if he was looking for something, or someone. At some point, Nancy thought, she was going to have to climb down off the catwalk and onto the floor of the tunnel itself. Was there a set of stairs ahead, or even one of those steel ladders like you see on swimming pools?

  The waiter was up now, but hobbling. He threw a finger at Nancy as he passed down the middle of the tunnel, shouting, “Get on back! I'll do this!”

  But Nancy kept on. Jack was under the third trestle now; its huge rusted bulk hung high above him, like an iron bone in the rib cage of some monster. Nancy thought for a second of Pinocchio, swallowed up in the belly of the whale.

  The waiter was hollering at him now. “Hey you! Hey! Where you think you're going?” His words echoed around in the barreled vault of the tunnel with a hollow, ghostly sound, which seemed to have its effect on the waiter, too. When he shouted again, it was less strident, almost friendly. “Hey you, hey buddy -- why don't you come on back? Come on now -- come on back.”

  Either the roadbed had been rising, or the catwalk descending, but the distance between the two was no more than a yard or so now. Nancy scanned the gravel for any obstructions, then jumped down onto the tunnel floor. The waiter wheeled around when he heard her land.

  “You too now?” But he didn't seem unhappy to have her there. “What exactly is wrong with this dude?” Jack was still way ahead of them, almost entirely beyond the reach of the blue spotlights.

  “He's hallucinating,” she said, picking her way across the train tracks.

  “Yeah? And what else? Watch out there,” he said, pointing to a splintered tie. “Is he dangerous?”

  “No. I don't think so.”

  This didn't seem to reassure him.

  “Not if I'm there,” she added.

  “Then you be there.”

  They picked their way between the tracks, keeping Jack just within sight.

  “What's your name, anyway?”

  “Nancy.”

  “Lionel. . . You got balls, you know that?”

  “Thank you, I guess.” They were both, she noticed, speaking in low tones, leery of creating any more echoes, affected by the increasingly eerie atmosphere. Nancy looked back for an instant, toward the Torch Room; it looked like a stage set from here, raised up above the level of the tunnel floor,

  framed by the stone angels, lighted by the orange flames. Dozens of people were packed against the railing.

  Only in this case she and Lionel and Jack were the show.

  Jack was beyond the spotlights now; all she could see of him was the faint glow of his white shirt.

  “You know where this tunnel ends?”

  Lionel, still limping a little from his fall on the tracks, said, “No idea. I been told it hooks up to some underground rail-yards. But I gotta believe there's a gate, or a fence, or somethin’ that's gonna stop him. How could the club have got a permit here if this thing was still opened up to hell and gone?”

  How could they, Nancy agreed; there had to be a fence, or a wall of some sort, to seal it off. And it had to appear soon . . . because if the tunnel got any blacker, there'd be no way to see Jack, much less catch him.

  “Mother?”

  Could she have slipped past him?

  “Are you there?” He curled his fingers around the silver meshwork of the cyclone fence; it was the highest one he'd ever seen, like a backstop at a baseball diamond. It rose almost to the ceiling of the tunnel. “Are you there?” he repeated.

  Why would she have abandoned him now? Why would she have led him all this way, just to desert him at a dead end?

  He shook the fence, but it was so huge, and so high, barely rattled. The only light came from a single white bulb, mounted in a circular metal fixture directly overhead. There was no gate, or opening, of any kind. He leaned forward against the fence, resting his forehead on the cold metal. “Mother,” he murmured, “is it really you? Or am I crazy?” With his eyes closed, he rolled his head, back and forth, against the fence. “What is happening to me?”

  “. . .Jack. . .”

  His eyes sprang open, his fingers clutched the metal grille-work. There was a shadowy figure off to his right, on the other side of the fence. He stumbled across the tracks toward her, mumbling, “Wait! Don't go!”

  She was standing only a few feet back from the fence, in a gloomy pocket near the wall. Her dark hair nearly concealed her face, but still she looked to be no more than nineteen or twenty years old. She was wearing a blue jacket, with white vinyl sleeves, and Jack knew, if she turned, he would see “Weehawken High” on the back.

  “Jesus. . . it is you.” He could hardly believe his eyes. “Come closer.”

  But she stayed where she was. “You come to me,” she said. Her voice -- it ran through him like a lightning bolt. It was the most beautiful, most foreign, most familiar sound he'd ever heard.

  “How can I?” He shook the fence. “How can I?”

  “You want to, you can.” She turned on her heel, and sauntered off, slowly. The jacket read “Weehawken High.”

  “No! Wait! Don't go!” He shook the fence fiercely, and suddenly realized it had given way, peeled loose from the wall. It didn't leave much of a space, but if he pulled it back as hard as he could, and wedged himself against the wall, there'd be just enough room to get through.

  When he turned sideways, his back to the cold bricks, he saw two figures coming down the tunnel toward him. One was Nancy, that much he could tell, but the other. . . the other was astonishingly tall, and dark. He had to squint before he could make out the turban that created the illusion of such height. It was that waiter, from the Torch Room. Together, he knew they would try to stop him. Which he could not let happen, not when so much was at stake. There wouldn't be time to make them -- to make Nancy -- understand.

  But they must suddenly have seen him. Nancy cried,

  “Jack! Wait for me! I want to help you!”

  It was like being tugged in two directions at once, Nancy pulling him back toward the club, his mother luring him deeper into the tunnel. He had to hurry.

  Pushing the fence back with all his strength, he squirmed through. The fence snapped back with an angry clatter. Nancy and the waiter were running toward him, stumbling over the train ties and loose stones.

  “Go back!” he shouted. “Go back!”

  “No. . . wait. . .please.” Nancy came to the fence, gasping for breath. “Jack. . . don't go any farther. There's nothing out there. . . Please come back.”

  The waiter hobbled up, favoring one leg. “Listen, dude -- you keep goin’ and you're
gonna get arrested, and I'm gonna lose my job. Okay? So be nice and come on back to the club with us, and I'll get you a free drink, anything you want, on the house.”

  Nancy was pleading with him with her eyes, and he was afraid that if he looked any longer, he might give in. “Go back,” he said, softly, and turned away. When he heard the waiter say, “Shit, how'd he get through here?” he set off down the tunnel at a slow jog. He still had to be sure not to overpass her.

  The roadbed was curving now, and gradually descending. A couple of times he almost lost his footing. There was no sign of his mother, anywhere. But he knew now that she would not have deserted him, that she would be waiting for him, somewhere ahead. Far behind him, he could hear the screeching sound of the metal fence being scraped against the brick wall. He ran faster.

  And suddenly found himself at the end of the curve, standing where the tunnel, like a river flowing into the ocean, opened onto an underground cavern so vast he was momentarily stunned. A subterranean railyard, acres and acres of it, criss-crossed by a thousand tracks, filled with the abandoned carcasses of locomotives and passenger cars and, stacked like shoeboxes three or four high, gray container cars that said ALLEGHENY or ATLANTIC TRANSPORT on their sides. They looked, in the dull uneven glow of the light bulbs strung sporadically overhead, like huge, sleeping insects, their black steel glinting like the carapace of a beetle, the muted orange of the passenger cars like the back of a ladybug. Nowhere, in all this enormous space, was there any life or movement.

  How, Jack wondered, would he ever find her in here?

  He wouldn't, of course -- she would find him. . .just as she had been doing.

  He left the overhang of the tunnel, and descended to the cluttered plain before him. Once down among the tracks and railroad cars, he found it even darker, more forbidding. The cars loomed above him, blocking the light, casting deep shadows. He entered a sort of aisle, between what looked like they'd once been coal trains, and stopped when he saw something, fast and dark, flash across his path. A cat, down here? He bent down, to look under the car where it had disappeared. At first there was nothing, but when he said, “Hey, kitty,” snapping his fingers, he saw a lot of squirming between the tracks, and heard not a meow but a squeaking sound -- many squeaking sounds. And glimpsed the snap of a black, whiplike tail.

  Jesus -- it's rats. A whole nest of them, crawling all over each other. He quickly stood up, and looked around for something he could use as a weapon, just in case he needed one. A stick, a pipe, a broom handle -- anything. He glanced up, toward a passenger car parked at the end of the aisle he was in, and saw, behind one of its smudged windows, the pale silhouette of a face. . . perfectly still, in profile. The train said MONONGAHELA RAIL AND CARGO, in faded white letters, on the dull-red side.

  It was as much of an invitation as he was likely to get.

  There was a scuttling sound from the rat's nest beneath the train, but nothing came out to molest him. The face in the window stayed just as it was.

  The only entry to the car she was in was at the rear. He went to it slowly, gripped the handrail; the rusted paint flaked off on his hand. He swung himself up, onto the corrugated metal steps, and took hold of the door handle. Holding his breath, he pushed in on the door, it rattled slightly, but didn't budge. He pushed again, and this time it creaked back a few inches. How the hell had his mother gotten this open? Or had she even needed to?

  He put his shoulder to it, and gave the door a shove. It grated against the floor, then suddenly gave way, swinging back with a bang against an interior wall, and carrying Jack halfway into the car. He stumbled against the back of a seat, and regained his balance.

  His mother, seated about ten rows ahead, didn't move, of cum around.

  The interior itself was murky with shadow. Some of the seats faced forward, some of them back; all were tattered and beaten-up. Between them, there were little tabletops: on one, to Jack's right, there was a filthy old folded newspaper. This must have been a dining car.

  The only sound was his own labored breathing.

  “Mother. . . I'm here,” he said, as if she could possibly not know it. But he felt he had to say something, had to speak to her before she somehow vanished again. “I want to talk to you.” He took a step toward her, but she still didn't turn. He went from row to row, holding the iron handle on the back of each seat, until he was just behind her. Her hair was neatly parted, right down the middle, and glistened as if it had just been washed. Her arms were resting on the table in front of her.

  He knew now that the chase was over. He slid into the seat facing hers. They sat, silently, like two travelers thrown together at the same table, not knowing where to begin.

  Her eyes were downcast. She had long, full lashes. She seemed, though he didn't dare reach out to touch her, as substantial, as real, as he was. And so young. He couldn't get over how young she was -- how much younger than he was. Somehow, it seemed easier to overlook the fact that she was dead than that she was so much younger; it was as if his mind, having accepted the impossible, had balked at going even one step further. It couldn't quibble with what patently could not be, but the evidence of his senses -- what he saw sitting passively on the cracked leather seat -- that it could contest, and would. His own mother could not be seven or eight years younger than he was!

  She moved her hand on the tabletop, as if to brush away some crumbs. Not that any morsel of food would have escaped the rats, Jack thought, not after all these years.

  “I thought I'd never catch up with you,” he said.

  She didn't reply.

  He looked around at the dark and dilapidated car. An open suitcase, empty, hung forlornly from a luggage rack overhead.

  He tried again.

  “You picked quite a place to finally get together,” he said, and to his amazement, she smiled, just like a teenage girl might do.

  “Yeah, well. . . I didn't really plan it this way.”

  She was talking to him! They were actually sitting together, talking now, in one place; she wasn't moving away, or disappearing, or leading him on. That alone exhilarated, and frightened, him. . . because now they were truly, somehow, in : league.

  “What did you plan?”

  She hesitated, then shrugged. She was slender, but the big shoulders of the jacket bulked her up. “None of this. . . I never planned on anything that happened to me.” There was a resigned, even wistful, tone to her words. “Let the good times roll. . . isn't that what you musicians say?” Her eyes came up to meet his now, and again, it was as if he were looking into some strange sort of mirror, seeing some bizarrely altered reflection of himself. There were the same deep-green eyes, the same dark eyebrows, the same wide mouth, with the tiny lines at either corner. But this was the face of a pretty -- very pretty -- young woman, someone who could have been his sister, his younger sister, and everyone would have noted the striking resemblance. For a moment, Jack felt as if that's who she was, and he was overcome by a sudden rush of tenderness and solicitude. He could almost feel his brain grappling with the possibility, liking it, battening onto it as an explanation for all that had come before. If only this were his long-lost sister, then other things, some of them at least, might fall into place, might start to make sense. If only the whole situation could be rethought with that as the essential premise. . .

  But of course it couldn't. A sudden shiver snapped him back to reality. For the, first time, he realized how cold it was.

  He buttoned up the open front of his shirt.

  “You were at the show,” Jack said, “last week.”

  She nodded her head. “Front row seat.”

  “What'd you think?”

  “Didn't you hear me clapping?”

  Of course he had; he could hear it even now, that endless, hollow, rhythmic rapping of the rolled program in the open palm. “And you were at my apartment, later that night.” Exactly when, he silently wondered?

  She gave him a sly smile. “You got my card.”

  The pro
gram.

  “Were you shocked?”

  Was he? She asked him almost playfully, as if it had been a prank and she was anxious to know how it had turned out. “Yes,” he said, “when I figured out it had been you.”

  She looked pleased.

  “But why were you there? Or here -- tonight?” There was so much he needed to know, he didn't dare lose this opportunity. “And how? How can you do this? I found a bunch of old newspapers, in the attic in Weehawken -- Mam and Clancy had stashed them away -- I read about what happened to you, the accident, the stuff after -- “

  She had turned her head toward the window as he spoke, gazing off at whatever could be seen through the cracked and dirty glass.

  “ -- the respirators, the brain scans. How they managed to keep you alive, all those months, until I could be safely delivered. Do you remember any of that? Were you aware of what was happening? I couldn't tell from the articles -- the guy who was driving the car, who died in the crash; was he somebody special to you, or just a friend?” He wrapped his arms around himself, to try to get warm, then asked what he'd been waiting to ask all his life. “Was he my father?”

  “Is that all you wanted to know?” she said, bitterly. “Jesus, you sound like Clancy. He'd stand by the hospital bed saying, ‘Who did it? Who did it?’ Like whoever knocked me up was somehow responsible for turning me on to drugs or putting my face through that windshield.”

  There was something about that in one of the articles -- how she'd been thrown through the glass and onto the hood of the other car. But here she looked completely unhurt.

  “Like, what about me?” she said. “How do you think it made me feel to have my whole life cut short like that? To just have everything taken away from me in about three seconds flat? And all because some guy behind the wheel couldn't handle a couple of downers?” She looked over at Jack, in her eyes a deep-seated and lingering resentment. But surely not against him? “And yes, that guy driving the car was your father. Or at least probably.”