Wick - The Omnibus Edition

by Bunker, Michael

  Clay scratched his face and felt the beginnings of a beard, just the hint of stubble from this morning. He lifted his arms above his head, felt his shoulder pop and his back muscles ache, then he stood and shook out his legs.

  ****

  Clay walked up Malcolm X Boulevard and into the heart of Harlem. He was tired of cataloguing trees and fallen branches. There weren’t even that many around here. For once, it seemed, nature had spared those who were often hardest hit by the problems of the city. The electricity was running, people were going about their business, and life seemed as close to usual as possible. He was glad to be walking under a broad expanse of sky, even if it was turning to a bluish hue as dusk began to settle behind the still grey clouds.

  As he came to about 120th Street, he dipped into a small bodega. He walked through the store towards the back to get a bottle of water from the cooler, and he could hear a conversation over the racks, near the counter, between two flirtatious youths.

  “Oh, come on, you know you want to… give me your number, baby…”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to give if you don’t leave me alone, Papi… the back of my hand!”

  “There, see, you called me Papi. Come on, baby. Give me your number.”

  Clay came around the aisle and saw the young man from the statue leaning over the counter on his elbow, flashing his most confident smile. The girl blushed and noticed Clay and turned away from the young man to help him. “Oh, don’t mind him. He’s just trouble, that’s what he is,” she said.

  “With a capital T,” the youth chimed in, and then, noticing Clay from the statue, seemed to straighten up a little.

  “You’re the guy from Duke Ellington.”

  “Yes. I am indeed, that very same guy. How are you?”

  “Good, I’m just trying to get a little notice here. Hey, where’re you walking with that backpack?”

  “Home. Where are you going with your skateboard?”

  “The same, and I guess I better be off. Where’s your home, mister?”

  “Mister? Now, don’t be calling me mister. I’m not ready to be called mister just yet. I’m going to Ithaca. Upstate. Ever been there?”

  “Nah, but my mom has a friend in Woodstock. Is that anywhere close?”

  “Ehh. Not really, about a 150 miles.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t get out of the city much.”

  “Well, you should, there’s a whole big world out there.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I hear. Maybe I’ll get a backpack and head out myself one day.”

  “Well, there are worse things to do.”

  With that, Clay paid the bill, smiled, and walked out. As he did, the youth, too, gave up his flirting and grabbed his board where he’d left it leaning against the door.

  He walked out just as Clay opened the top to his bottle of water and leaned his chin up and back to take a swig. He gave Clay a little wave that made him seem much younger than the conversation they’d just shared, and then turned back up the street.

  He dropped his board and took a running start, landing thick on the deck, then he rolled across the sidewalk. (Kerthump… kerthump.) He gave his board a little jump as he rolled off the curb and out in the street, where he was promptly hit by a car.

  ****

  Clay had been the first one to reach him. The car itself had come to more or less an immediate stop, but the driver was so stunned by the body flying onto her hood that she’d been paralyzed into inaction. The boy, for his part, had rolled up onto the windshield and had come sluggishly to a stop before jumping down from the hood and trying to act as if nothing had happened. The board was broken under the wheel of the car, and the boy’s painful grimace as he hit the ground showed that more than his pride was hurt. He hopped on one foot as Clay reached him and lifted him up to support him while helping him onto the curb. A small crowd gathered of a few straggling pedestrians who stretched their necks to see if anything was worth seeing, then moved on when it became apparent that no blood had been spilled.

  Clay sat the boy down on the ground and inspected his foot. It appeared as if the ankle had been sprained badly, but there didn’t seem to be any broken bones. The ankle was tender when he offered resistance and already it was beginning to swell and turn slightly blue. The boy wouldn’t be able to walk.

  “Oh, my mom’s going to kill me,” the boy said. “She just bought me that board.”

  “Oh, I’m certain that she won’t do that. That would be murder. Up you go, come on,” Clay said. “Let’s go, I’ll help you walk. Lean on me.”

  “But mis–” the boy caught himself.

  “Clay.”

  “But Clay, I don’t want to stop you from going home.”

  “I’m going that way, anyway – ”

  “Stephen.”

  “Stephen... I might as well stop a murder.”

  ****

  They hobbled along the street, this odd pair, like two soldiers escaping the front. Never leave a man behind, Clay smiled to himself. Always leave yourself a way out, and never leave a man behind. He wondered what others around them thought. Normally, he was a believer in what Eleanor Roosevelt once said: you wouldn’t worry what other people thought of you if you only knew how seldom they do. But, in this case, from the looks they received as they straggled along, he felt it safe to make an exception.

  Turning west on 132nd, they limped for half a block before coming to a narrow space between two buildings that opened through a gate. “She’ll be in here,” the boy said as he left Clay’s shouldering support and tried to make his way into a garden. Clay followed closely, with his arms out extended as though he were carrying some gift to meet a queen.

  “Mom?”

  Clay saw the woman stand up from the edge of a flowerbed where she’d been kneeling and pruning, and turn around with an attitude that she’d obviously rehearsed before. She was tall and thin, like her son, with an angular face, and hair bundled up in a knot till it spilled down her back in long ropy twists. She was, despite her initial look of perturbation standing there among the still blooming fall flowers, beautiful.

  “Mom, I had an accident. This man here, Clay, helped me get home.” The woman’s face softened, and her features dissolved into concern. Only then did she notice Clay standing there behind the boy, sticking out like a thread on a homemade sweater.

  “Wha’ happened?” the woman said as she moved toward the boy, not hurriedly, but deliberately, and with tenderness. She smiled at Clay, and he wondered about her accent. It was obvious and surprising, made more so by her son’s lack of the same.

  “I got hit by a car. I’m OK!” he quickly added. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  She moved toward him and took him in her arms and held him like she wouldn’t let go. Clay stepped backwards and glanced down before looking up into the woman’s face as she opened her eyes and took him in.

  “Mister…”

  “Call me Clay.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know who you are or why you were in the right place at the right time, but thank you for helping my Stephen.”

  “It was no problem ma’am. He needs to get off that foot though. He sprained the ankle pretty badly.”

  “Yes, of course,” the woman said and then helped the boy out of the gate and up the stairs of the adjacent house. “Where you going?” she said as Clay turned on his heel, as if to leave. “I’ve got to get on,” he said, noticing the dark in the sky.

  “Nonsense, you’ll stay and have dinner.” Clay didn’t know whether it was something she’d seen in his eyes or the fact that he carried the backpack, but she’d summed him up in the space of a glance, and he could tell that arguing would be futile. He was hungry. That settled the matter.

  He undid the slips of his harness and dropped his pack to the ground, picking it up by a handle on top, and followed them up the stairs.

  ****

  The room was clean and bright, warm and warmly designed, with numerous books lining she
lves that extended the lengths of the walls. Clay stood and examined them as the woman disappeared in a room down the hall with the boy. The titles were those you don’t normally find on an American bookshelf, with names like The Female Poets of Great Britain. Many of them were old; all of them were worn. In the spaces between the books, there were also odd little eclectic items. Fossil samples, butterflies in cases, the exoskeletons of insects, and the like. Sprinkled through the displays were black and white photos of the woman and her son, neatly-framed, showing them in various poses in mostly unidentifiable locations, each more lovely than the others. The walls were lined with impressionist renderings, some with warm blotches of color seemingly haphazardly arranged to create an effect of chaos, others carefully, meticulously set with parallel lines and grids of intricate color. Clay seemed to recognize something in them that he couldn’t yet make out, and he was trying to decide what it was when the woman came back into the room.

  “Oh, that boy is such a naughty one. Lord knows I love him, but he does know how to give me a headache.”

  “I know,” Clay said, “I had girls of my own…”

  The woman heard his voice trail off and seemed to immediately understand. “I’m sorry,” she said. Clay waved her off, as is if to say, Thank you, but no need to be sorry.

  “Who’s the artist?”

  “Those are mine. You like them, eh? They are meant to represent the lines you find in nature in the smallest detail. I was a painter before I became a landscaper. My first love, however, is botany. It seems a nice way to combine both.”

  “Oh, wow. These are nice.”

  “Thank you. I studied at the Cooper Union. It was the reason I came to this country.”

  “From?”

  “I’m a Trini. And I hope you like Trini food. Stephen tells me that you’re on a journey?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m going back to my farmhouse in Ithaca.”

  “Oh? To inspect it for damage from the storm?”

  Clay nodded his head no. “To live. I’m going home for good.”

  “Ahhh. A fugitive. Or is it a refugee? I’m going with fugitive. Well, Mr. Fugitive, take your pack and go down the hall to the second door on the left. You’ll find a clean towel and you can make yourself at home.”

  “Oh, I appreciate it, and I’ll certainly eat your food, but I couldn’t—”

  “Nonsense. You can, and you will. You’re not going to make it to Ithaca tonight, and you don’t want to be out in these streets.”

  Clay could tell that it would be better to save his breath with this woman. “Well, thank you.”

  “No thanks needed. You took care of my boy. It is I who should be thanking you. My name, by the way, is Veronica. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

  Clay walked into the bedroom and lifted his pack onto the bed. Unzipping its large front pocket, he began pulling the items out one at a time. The small water bottles he’d brought were all gone. He still had the matches and three of the energy bars. The rest of the things he pulled out, organizing them on the bed. The last of these items, a small stack of papers he had rolled up like a telescope, was crinkled from the trip. He slid the rubber bands off the ends and straightened the papers with his hand. It was a small, typed manuscript of poems that he’d once written to his love. He’d spent many hours writing poems, both before and after Cheryl and the girls had gone. Not all of them were ‘love poems’ per se, but all were, in some way, sincere declarations of his undying devotion. Some of them were about things he saw, or thoughts that he’d had, but all of them were motivated by his loss and his love for his wife and children. At one point he’d considered having them published, but had never had the courage to submit them. They were really just exercises in adoration—of life, of love, of the home he’d once known with his family. Now as he caressed the pages, standing there in this home where a mother and son were still together, still able to touch each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices, he smiled as he thought about how his daughters might have sassed some boy like the girl in the bodega had. He yearned for Cheryl and the brush of her hand against his cheek, remembering the way she sang when she cooked dinner.

  ****

  The warm water felt good on his body after the long day of walking, and soothed his tired muscles. Clay stood under the stream and pushed his hands across his face and through his hair. Steam filled the air with fog, and he wondered whether this would be the last shower he’d have for a while. There was simply no telling once he got back on the road, but he liked the uncertainty. That was part of the adventure, walking out into the world without knowing what would happen next. He reached and twisted the knobs, feeling the warm spray slow to a trickle and then a drip and then he stepped out into the softness of the towel.

  Coming back to the room after having dressed in a fresh pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt, Clay found that Veronica had gathered his clothes from the floor, and he heard the machine in the hallway filling. Thoughtful. He’d have never asked, and if anyone else had done it, he might have found it intrusive, but something in her way made him feel comfortable with the gesture. He was glad to be in this home at this moment rather than walking in the dark toward God knows what. He came out of the bedroom and passed through the hall and made his way again into the living room.

  The house was filled with a warm, tempting aroma of food and life, and he felt the hunger in his stomach tumble, and that feeling pleased him too. He looked across the room and saw Veronica with her back turned to him, her long twists of hair flowing across her back as she moved around her kitchen.

  “I appreciate this. I really do.”

  “No worries. It’ll be nice to have company for dinner. I took the liberty of washing your clothes. I hope you don’t mind. I tried not to be too snoopy.”

  “No, not at all. And thanks. I’m afraid I am putting you out.”

  “Hmmph,” she said, and went back to cooking. She told him it’d be ready in a minute.

  Clay had once heard that the best way to tell if you’ll get along with someone is to question their tastes in music. He walked across the room to a small stereo, where the woman had CD’s lined along the window.

  “You like The Mountain Goats?”

  “Yes, I like John Darnielle’s passion, and his lyrics. I even like his religious album.” When she said this, she made quotes in the air around the word “religious,” and Clay knew exactly what she meant—that the album had not really been religious, and that anyway, all his music was suffused with a kind of respect for such sensibilities, and that anyway, one man’s religion was another man’s folly. He understood her meaning as certainly as if they shared a secret language, which as fans, they kind of did.

  “I saw him in October at the Bowery Ballroom,” Clay said.

  “Yeah? Yudehdedaedadiwahdehdowndeh?”

  “Ummm. What?”

  “You deh… de day… dad I… wah deh… down deh?”

  “Oh, yes, I guess I was. Wasn’t it great? It’s a surprise I didn’t see you.” He blushed because he realized that he had just as much as said that she was hard to miss with her long black hair and her striking features. His blushing made her blush, and she smiled, reaching up with her hand to cover the smile.

  “Yes, well it’s a surprise that I wasn’t seen.”

  ****

  The meal consisted of something she called “buss up shot” which was a light, flaky dough cooked in ghee butter (“because it looks like a busted up shirt,” Stephen said, as if that somehow explained everything.) Veronica set out three separate bowls with each having a separate dish of chickpeas and spinach and curry chicken. “Just tear off a piece of the bread and wrap it around a bit of these and put it your mouth,” she told him, “and if you’re feeling brave, try a little pepper sauce.” She pushed a small bowl of some condiment across the table, from which extended a spoon.

  Clay was feeling brave although Stephen apparently wasn’t, and after his first bite he realized why. He reached down and gathered a b
ite of chickpeas in the dough and poured a bit of the sauce from the spoon and ate it. His mouth was set aflame with a sensation he hadn’t quite felt before. His eyes and nose and mouth began to water. Veronica and Stephen began to snicker and then finally busted out laughing as Clay wiped his face. “I told you that you’d better be brave, Mister, but I didn’t say be stupid! Just a drop, Clay. Just a drop.”

  “Yeah, well you left that part out, Veronica.” He choked for a moment and then felt the taste of the food kick in, and reached in for another bite.

  It was the best meal he’d had in months. The company, the food, the warm cup of coffee afterward – Clay found himself thoroughly enjoying the whole experience. They sat and talked about the storm and how Veronica had come to this island from another island, from a small town outside of Port-of-Spain.

  “There was a hill there you could drift down forever,” she said. “Just get on your bike in the morning and begin rolling downhill, never once pedaling, and not stop until the sun was setting. Of course, then you had to walk back up!”

  Clay told them that he’d once climbed a tree in his forest in Ithaca to see the sunrise, and as he was watching it come over the horizon, it had been so beautiful that he lost his balance and fell out of the tree and hadn’t landed until evening. “Of course, most of that I’m making up,” he said, “but, hey, what good is a story if it is entirely true?” They all laughed and the bowls slowly emptied.

  After they finished, Clay helped Veronica clear the dishes from the table and Stephen went into the living room to turn on the TV. The news of Sandy’s devastation was on every channel, and they gathered around for a moment to watch. The video of destruction was sobering—of roller coasters falling into the sea and smoke rising up from cinders and waters rushing over streets and sand piling up on the barriers or being washed out to sea. It seemed like a million miles away now even if some of it was right outside the door.