“What do you mean by that?” I ask. “Are you telling me you were in the emergency room?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I keep forgetting you can’t remember.”
“Yeah. I can’t remember. So why don’t you tell me. Tell me what you were doing in the emergency room.” The Monday night I got Spocked, Alix did not go to the emergency room. I drove myself. She mopped spaghetti sauce and finished putting away the groceries.
Looking away, Alix says quietly, “I had a sliver of glass … in my eye. That’s all.”
“Sure, sure.” I say. “That glass jar of Ragú. But how is that my fault?”
“Nobody said anything was your fault, Coop. Nothing is your fault, OK? Is that what you need to hear?”
“I need to hear Al’s version of the truth.”
She huffs, turns to confront me. “There’s only one version, Coop. You fastballed that Ragú at my head—it smashed into the fridge right next to my face and a piece—”
“No,” I say. “No no no. Maybe I was holding it when it dropped.Maybe I even spiked it onto the floor. But no way did I throw it at you. Not even if maybe I did get angry.”
We’re silent, still drifting toward the dark forest. Other paddle-boats veer, giving us a wide berth. Our voices carry across the water. Along the banks, I see some people staring at us. Ahead of us, Brook’s paddleboat is parked behind a tree. She’s looking in our direction.
Alix says, “Coop, how’d you know it was a jar of Ragú?”
“I just got a flash,” I say. “That’s all.”
She studies my face before saying, “Well, it’s the truth. Whether you remember it or not. That’s the way it happened.”
But it’s not the way it happened. I would never do anything like that. I have no defense against something I don’t remember doing. Something I didn’t do.
“Coop,” she says, “all this is in the past now. And I think we need to leave it there. I think that—”
Alix keeps talking, but my eyes focus past her, on Brook. She’s standing up in her boat. Clearly, she’s heard us fighting. From behind a clump of cypress, she can’t be seen by folks along the bank or the other paddleboaters. I am her only audience. She gives me the A-OK sign, which I don’t understand. Then she flashes one finger, then the peace sign, then three fingers, after which she screams the one word guaranteed to draw the most attention in this place: “Gator! Gator! Gator!”
She waits a beat, then with a dancer’s precision she rocks her feet sideways, jarring the boat, and drops flailing out from the tree line, into the plain view of everyone. She is forty yards from me.
I know all her thrashing is probably an act, but still I panic. Brook’s life jacket is behind me. Alix and I start trying to turn the boat, instantly begin pedaling to the rescue, but a paddleboat at maximum warp is still a paddleboat. Five seconds into the crisis, I make my decision.
I stand and dive into the murky crap. The water is clammy cold and stagnant. I kick hard and move through the water. My wounded shoulder, which should be burning, feels perfect. It takes forever for me to reach Brook, still swinging her arms. She’s crying out, “Help! Help!” but it sounds so fake I actually say, “Cut that out,” when I get close. I put my feet down and feel the thick muddy bottom. We are in maybe five feet of water.
Using the technique I’ve studied on Baywatch, I get behind her and drag Brook up to one of the cypress trees that has a small landing, enough for me to shove her up and out of the water. At this moment, a kayaker appears from inside the forest. He’s young but trying to grow a beard.
“Everything alright?”
“There was an alligator,” Brook says, breathing fast and pointing into the water. “He knocked my boat over and tried to get me.”
I corral Brook’s overturned paddleboat and right it, then crawl up inside, wet and exhausted, my heart pumping like it does halfway into a match. I reach for my shoulder, which has decided in the wake of the adrenaline buzz to thump with jackhammer fury. The infection in my future makes me think of amputation.
Alix arrives on the scene, along with four other paddleboats, including the ponytail family I saw earlier from the bridge. The father asks, “What’s going on?”
The punk kayaker answers: “Gator, man. Tried to take her down. This dude chased it away.”
The little boy says, “Was it Grendel?”
“Could be,” the kayaker says, scanning the water.
“He’s not just some dude,” Brook says. “He’s my father. My father saved me from an alligator attack.”
The lie is so transparent, so clearly false, that I fear the whole small crowd will start scoffing. There is thoughtful silence among the group. I’m worried that any second Alix will say, “I’m sorry, everyone. My daughter takes after her father and is prone to severe delusions. When she was young, she faked seizures for six months.”
But instead Alix says, “It was an eight-footer, maybe ten. It passed me as I came in.”
The ponytail girl’s father grins at me. “Well, good job, Dad. Let’s get you people someplace dry.”
Alix paddles in close. I climb back into my chair and Brook kneels behind us in the rumble seat, facing forward. The kayaker asks if I’ll be OK and I reassure him. “Can you tow in the other boat?” I ask, and he agrees, happy to fill the role of the hero’s sidekick.
The procession toward shore is a slow one, a parade of paddle-boats cruising in patiently like a fleet of victorious battleships. Word of the rescue reaches land ahead of us, and onlookers line the dock, waiting and staring. Around us, the others in the armada are smiling and excited, unaware they are supporting actors in the year’s best melodrama. As the audience along shore begins to applaud, Brook squeezes my hand to her right and Alix’s to her left. Simultaneously we return our daughter’s secret signal, and all three of us understand exactly what’s going on here. And it feels so damn good, to be here in this bubble with them. Incredibly, unbelievably, a family.
-----
The Truest True American. A Presidential Update.
The Things Darwin Had to Say. Goldilocks Syndrome.
On the drive home even having the windows down doesn’t help with the stench. My clothes smell like a combination of wet garbage and duck shit. And I’m worried too about infecting the bullet wound in my shoulder, where the muscles have grown so stiff it’s difficult to turn the steering wheel. So as I rumble down the back alley, I’m thinking about a shower, a long hot one like the kind Hardy takes before matches. After that, I’ll order out for some pizza and take in a marathon session of ESPN. Later on, if my mind settles like I hope it will, I may call Rhonda, though I have no idea exactly what I’ll say. Before, when Alix held my hand, it felt warm and good.
But just after I park, as I’m reaching for the keys, I see Winston coming toward me in the rearview mirror. Despite the afternoon heat, he is wearing a black turtleneck sweater. One hand swipes his bald head, and his stride is uneven and hurried. I slide out of my Ford onto the gravel and turn to meet him. The golden boots adorn his feet.
“Dr. Cooper!” he shouts, throwing up the sweaty hand as he crosses the church lot. Behind him, a few homeless sit atop the rubble wall, backs toward me, facing the TV altar. I wonder what they’re watching. Winston steps up to me, bringing his face within a foot of mine, and asks, “Where have you been all day? I’ve had grave concerns.”
“Down at the lake,” I say, a statement immediately supported by the state of my clothing.
But Winston ignores my clothes, instead flashing a look left and right before leaning in even closer and cupping his hand to my ear. “We need to talk. But not here. We may be under surveillance.”
I jack a thumb toward my apartment, “Come on up. Let me wash.”
Winston shakes his head. “Early this a.m. Brother Gladstone reported a strange figure in the tree by the front of your house. I’m not sure your home hasn’t been compromised.”
I shrug, look around, then open my pickup door and say, �
��Hop in.”
Nodding his approval of my secret agent skills, Winston crawls across the driver side. When he sees the giant cardboard sunglasses folded up on the floor of the cab, he stretches out their accordion shape and props them in the windshield. I slide back behind the wheel and close the door. He says, “Turn the radio on. That should counteract any whisper technology.”
I turn the key and bring on my only station, WAOK. This late in the day, I’m surprised to hear a preacher still going at it: “Better to be a foot soldier in Jesus’s army,” he rants, “than to be a five-star general for Satan.”
For a reason I can’t fathom, Winston fastens his seat belt.
“OK,” I say. “Lay it on me.”
“This morning, early, we were being observed. I think they know.”
“Slow down,” I say. “Who knows what?”
“Two trucks circled the block. Tinted windows. City of Wilmington insignia on the doors, but clearly fraudulent. Dr. Cooper, I’ve begun to fear the worst—the UN has become aware of my Svobodian connections.”
“Maybe the trucks were lost,” I offer.
“People with tinted windows don’t get lost. No, the truth is that they understand this place is a nexus, perhaps the most powerful one on the planet. Certainly, they’ll attempt to secure this location.”
On the radio, the voice says, “But Jesus’s army never has a draft! It’s a volunteer corps. Because Jesus is the truest-true American. He believes in absolute freedom of choice. So you sinners can choose to go straight to hell and that’s fine with the rest of us.” Laughter follows.
“We have to prepare for an assault,” Winston says. “Damn, I wish we had that fourth wall up. A castle with three walls is difficult to defend. I think that’s Sun Tzu.”
I’m tired and dirty. My shoulder pulses and I’m picturing the antibiotic cream in my medicine cabinet. “Winston,” I say, “I don’t think anybody’s going to attack.”
“Because we’ve got squadrons of angels on our side. Whole skies full of flaming swords. We beat Satan before and we can do it again.”
Nodding at the radio, Winston says, “Pray for peace, Buddy. But plan for war.”
The congregation has begun chanting, “We did it before and we can do it again,” like students at a high school pep rally. I picture pom-pom cheerleaders back-flipping for Christ.
Realizing I can’t alter the flow of Winston’s argument, I ask him, “So you want me to call the cops?” I feel guilty for not taking him seriously, but right now I just need to be upstairs.
Winston looks me straight in the eye and says, “The cops? I fear you misunderstand the enemy’s resources.”
Something bang-boom-bangs my rear quarter panel, and Winston ducks his face into the dashboard, assuming the crash position. “Take cover!” he shouts. “Incoming!”
I spin to find Dr. Gladstone banging on my truck. My WORLD’S #1 DAD baseball cap is on his head. “Alert!” he shouts. “Emergency coming on the TV! Alert! Emergency!”
Winston lifts his face. On the radio, the preacher’s voice disappears, then there’s a second of silence before, “We interrupt this broadcast for an important message from the president of the United States.”
Winston scrambles out his side of the truck and I mine. We run with Gladstone to the top of the rubble wall, where a two dozen-strong congregation stares at the TV. Some faces are familiar from the cleanup, but many are new. Winston’s followers are growing. Gladstone points and says, “The president’s coming on with an important message for all Americans. Please stand by.” And sure enough, the screen fills with the familiar image of the president sitting at the world’s most famous desk.
The ruddy-faced man who scrubbed the pews clean shouts, “Hey, put the damn game back on.”
Dr. Gladstone shushes him, explains, “We all have to pay attention.”
Our leader smiles, hands folded calmly before him, and begins. “My fellow Americans and citizens of the world. It seems oddly appropriate that I come to you on a Sunday with a message of good news and hope. Our global crisis is over. Just half an hour ago, our best scientific minds concluded that due to recent unexplained changes, the asteroid no longer poses any threat to our planet. It will pass by the earth harmlessly sometime Tuesday. I say again, the earth is safe.”
Some of the homeless leap up and hug each other. Gladstone shakes my hand and beams. Then he sees Winston frowning next to me, arms crossed, stone-faced. “They’ve gotten to the president,” Winston says. “He’s lying. He’s afraid of what the truth will do to the stock market. He’s trying to prevent widespread panic. He sent those trucks this morning. He’s planning to assault my nexus.”
The television screen fades to black, and the image that rises from the blackness confuses me. It’s a baseball stadium, only the players are standing around, staring at a huge video screen over center field. And the crowd too is staring. There are no commentators’ voices, no movement of the camera. When the crowd begins to cheer, I think at first I’ve missed a home run, but then I see the players clapping too. The shortstop runs to the third-base coach and embraces him. They’ve seen the same message we just did. On the big screen. The catcher rips off his mask and wraps his arms around the umpire. The ovation in the stadium rises to an unbelievable pitch, and then I realize the applause isn’t coming from just the tiny speaker of the Trinitron.
Turning, I see people in every building in my view throwing open their windows and cheering, hands over their heads praising and celebrating. Beneath the blue sky of the summer sun, downtown Wilmington, possibly the whole city, the whole planet, is applauding. The rays of the sun sprinkle light through the shards of stained glass still clinging in the high broken windows of the Salvation Station.
“C’mon,” shouts the ruddy-faced pew scrubber. “Play ball.”
And looking back to the screen, I see the shifting motion in the stadium that can mean only one thing: They’re doing the wave. To celebrate the salvation of life on earth, they’re doing the wave.
I feel woozy.
One of the homeless stands up and squats down, stands up and squats down, tossing his hands over his head. But the man next to him grabs his shirt to stop him, then nods in Winston’s direction. The sound around us is like the ocean. In addition to the clapping and screaming, car horns are honking. And now church bells clamor away in madness and joy. And strange as Winston’s crazed nexus notion sounds, it does indeed feel to me like we’re at the center of the universe, like the whole of life is orbiting around us in this moment.
Winston turns in a slow circle, his face filling with red. His hands latch onto the side of his head, covering his ears. But it’s not enough. The sound coming from him starts as a moan but forms quickly into a growl. He looks up, his eyes wild, then leaps onto the marble altar. He screams, “Pygmies! All of you! Pygmies!” When he shoves the Trinitron onto the floor, the screen shatters, and as the set cartwheels down the steps, mechanical guts pop and whiz from the exploding box.
The ruddy-faced man walks away shaking his head. “We missed the seventhinning stretch.”
Winston collapses, crying. He spreads out across the top of the altar, waiting for Abraham to come by and end the confusion in his brain. Gladstone pats his head, brushing his hair with his hand as if he were a wounded child or a scolded dog. Without looking at me, Gladstone coaxes Winston off the altar and leads him up into the tower, hoping I’m sure that the power of the Chronicle Wall will somehow restore him.
Once inside my apartment, I lock the door—the deadbolt too—and head straight for the bathroom. I strip off my stinking clothes and clump them in a corner. Naked, I step into the shower, then crank up the hot water and let it blast into my chest. The water stings the bullet hole in my shoulder, but it’s a good sting. I reach one hand up and run a finger over the exit wound on my back. Despite all the turmoil of the last week, things feel fine here in this moment, and it’s more than the euphoria of knowing planet-wide destruction has been averted. I�
��m beginning to think maybe Hardy’s coach had a point about the benefits of hot showers. Then I think of Jhondu, how clarity found him beneath a waterfall, albeit a freezing one. My mind feels like it’s settling again. Back at Greenfield Lake I saw the true path for an instant. My course of action was simple and clean. Swimming toward Brook, my arms pumping and my legs kicking, all my injuries forgotten, this old warhorse body did well. It feels good to rub the soap over the muscles in my shoulders and remember that adrenaline high. There was a second, as I swam hard for my daughter, when I wished that Grendel was real. I’m not saying I wish Brook was actually in genuine danger, but afterward while I was concocting the official incident report for the paddleboat lady, I thrilled as I reimagined my approach to a savage predator. Mano a mano. No doubts or complications or court fees. Just the two of us.
I’m not convinced that killing Trevor would be a completely immoral act. It’s just a part of the natural world. I believe in the things Darwin had to say. You see it all the time on the Discovery Channel. Things die. Things get killed. Nobody arrests the lion. Nobody judges the wolf.
I shove my face into the rush of shower water and pretend I’m again approaching Brook, though now I have a Tarzan knife clenched between my teeth. Only suddenly there’s no alligator at all. In my mind, Trevor’s attacking her, yanking at her hair and trying to pull her under. I come up behind him and pull the knife from my teeth. The next part will be easy. Even just these thoughts set my heart skittering, my veins gorging with the rush. I remember what happened in the frozen-food aisle at Planet Foodville, and Chas on the floor at the dance benefit. The night I took out the Arab Assassin. These are the moments that truly make sense to me. When only the pulse of this blood seems real.
In my fantasy, my mind has skipped to Trevor’s funeral, where Al and Brook are dressed in black, upset for sure, but hardly devastated. Devastated would be a gross exaggeration. I deliver the eulogy because somehow nobody knows I killed him. And gathered to hear me speak is everyone, Quinn and Hardy and Paul and Rhonda and Winston and Jhondu and Marna the no-longer-quite-crippled girl. From the pulpit, looking out on them, everything makes sense to me. The pieces fit. The numbers add up. In Trevor’s death, all the madness in my life will find meaning. All the signs I’ve been unable to interpret will suddenly align like stars in a perfect, complex constellation.
Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Page 23
